Til Kingdom Come
by Amorisa
Summary: Being a somewhat fabricated, but mostly accurate, history of the Outer Zone, therein concerning the aftermath of the Emerald War and the restoration of the House of Gale.
1. Chapter One

**Author's Note**: Blanket disclaimer, do not own. This story is dedicated to my readers, those who've been with me since _"Of Light" _and all those who've found me along the way. I do this for me, and I do this for you. This story includes the introduction of Carver Lindsey, a.k.a. the Hot Longcoat from the final battle at the end of the mini-series. Enjoy!

**Concerning the Rating**: It will change when the plot dictates. Consider yourself warned if you don't want to start a story that will eventually change in rating.

**Spoiler Warning**: For everything ever.

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**'Til Kingdom Come  
**

* * *

**Part One  
**

"_Hm!" said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully. "If it is such hard work as you say, how did the women manage it so easily?"_

_"I really do not know," replied the man, with a deep sigh. "Perhaps the women are made of cast-iron."_

L. Frank Baum, The Marvellous Land of Oz

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**Chapter One**

_Lavender_

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The council table in the Silver Hall was made to seat thirty-two. A great behemoth of heavy pearlwood and ornately carved serpentine, the table was as old as the palace itself. It dominated the council hall, this ancestral table, a shadowed ghost of what had once been. From the high gallery that overlooked the hall, another fifty or more people could stand to look on and listen as matters great and small were brought before the queen. A half a century before, the hall and those who spoke and fought and ruled there had reached for the spires of greatness, there at the heart of the Shining City.

Now, instead of silver and satin and emerald glass, there was dust and decay and lingering gloom. A scuffed, dusty table, surrounded by windows covered with a decade's worth of soot and grime, empty frames where once the gilt mirrors had reflected the centuries of history's making. Now, instead of a council of the greatest, most powerful minds of the kingdom, nine ragged souls sat around the table, each in turn more weary than the last.

Lavender – the _Lightless_, it was whispered, if one listened to idle talk – sat at the head of the long table, her chair on a small dais, and watched her makeshift council impassively. _Nine, when it should be ten_, she thought, frowning at the empty seat that had been occupied only the day before. But then she happened to glance over to the next vacant seat down the line, and the next, and the next, until at last her eyes came to the high seat opposite hers, a place of honour and importance with only a ghost to hold it.

What a piteous motley she had gathered there. The abrupt ending of the war had made strange allies of them all, and she could not restore order to her country alone. It did not help matters that at just that moment, two of her bedfellows were exchanging bitter profanities, the heavy table between them bearing their weight as each leaned threateningly toward the other.

Perhaps she would not restore her country at all. The empty seat mocked her with that grave uncertainty.

To her left sat her husband, hopelessly slouched in his chair as he watched the proceedings with a smirk on his lips. To her right sat her once-advisor, Ambrose – now called _Glitch_, a name that did not roll off the tongue so well – caught in a moment of abject stillness, but for his eyes darting back and forth with each thrown insult.

"Please, gentleman," Lavender began, but her words went unheard as the young resistance fighter and longcoat field captain continued to exchange their hostilities. Fifteen annuals prior, when the dark witch had taken Azkadellia, these soldiers had been small children, blissfully protected by their mother's skirts. Now, in the wake of the war – the Emerald War, they were calling it – Lavender could not forget that these young men were hard and haggard, seasoned by their battles, and each was utterly despised by the other.

They were making her head ache.

"_Gentlemen,_" she tried again, but her voice did not have the strength it had once held. Once upon, she'd been able to silence the council chambers with that single word. She'd scarcely needed even that.

At the far end of the table, emptiness struggled to fill the seat opposite hers, lonely and cursed. She mourned the old man. Oft times, she even missed him.

The argument grew more heated, the contenders heedless of those watching anxiously. A fist was slammed down, rattling nearby ink-pots and candlesticks. As far down the heavy table as she was, Lavender felt no reverberation, but the sound cut through her nevertheless. She winced, and stood.

"_Enough_," she all but shouted, far sharper than ever intended. The fighting came to an abrupt end, and all eyes turned on her. Very well then. "How many men were lost?"

"Three of mine," said Jeb Cain, still seething and glaring across the table.

The subject of his loathing was a young Longcoat, the highest ranking officer to remain loyal to Azkadellia after the surrender at the tower. When the smoke had cleared, only a few hundred of the witch's forces had thrown down their weapons. The rest had fled once the clouds had parted and the suns had slipped out from behind the moon.

"And the deserters?" Azkadellia asked, and for all the steel in her voice, her eyes were cast down. Rarely did she look up anymore, shy and scared, drawn inward by her pain. Yet still she fought for purpose, to right the wrongs she'd inadvertently done, and for that Lavender was both proud and grateful. The rest would have to come slowly.

"Three as well," the dark-haired captain said, sitting up straighter at the voice of his mistress. "A failed ambush. The rest disappeared after the fight, but tracking them at this point is unlikely." He was not so open with his hostility as his rebel counterpart, but the menace in his voice had not diminished.

"And the supplies?" asked Glitch, reminding Lavender of the Ambrose he'd been with his practical concerns.

"Supplies were recovered and accounted for," said Wyatt Cain, tapping his fingers restlessly on the table. He looked at Glitch over the empty seat that separated them, seemingly as troubled by it as Lavender was. "Requisitions were sorted out at the base camp, and the rest is already on its way to Central City. Should be here before nightfall."

Lavender allowed herself a small smile for the peace the news brought her. Her kingdom was bleeding, her people were starving, they deserved all the relief she could provide in these brand new days of peace, however little it might be. Small refugee camps had already started cropping up outside the walls of the city, ragged mothers and their hollow-eyed children, the wounded and the homeless and the exiled.

"Has there been any word from the generals yet?" her husband asked, though in truth they were generals no longer. In the golden antebellum annuals, it was little more than an honorary title given to the warmasters of each province, the men voted to lead the provincial forces by the people of the four outlying guild factions, men who had sworn their fealty to the queen and council of Central City, the fifth province and seat of power in the Outer Zone.

"Andrus is dragging his feet," said Jeb Cain with some distaste. "My scouts are still trying to ferret out the others."

"You won't find Bluesire until he wants to be found," his father said, and Lavender found herself agreeing. The warriors of the Midlings were notoriously prickly about unwelcome visitors.

"Give them time," she said, still holding to hope. "Rumour travels faster than truth, but eventually they will come out of hiding to ascertain it, and we will be waiting. Have your scouts keep searching."

Once her kingdom had been united by the support of these generals, these four great men. _Five, _she reminded herself, staring down the seat opposite hers, the chair identical on its dais, carved and crowned and beautiful. Yet the war had taken the old wizard and divided the rest, and while each of her generals had fought the forces of the Sorceress, they had also descended into fighting amongst each other, and in the nine annuals Lavender been imprisoned no one had managed to unify the resistance factions in her name.

And yet this rogue band of the southern resistance, under the leadership of a young man barely old enough to remember the O.Z. as it had been, had come to the aid of her daughters and helped to win the war. She no longer held the rosy view of her world as she once had, and she doubted this young, sandy-haired rebel was up to the tasks necessary to unite the provinces and return her to her throne, and yet...

He was of an age with her youngest daughter, and deeds spoke truer than words. She could not bring herself to imagine the loss, sacrifice, and determination that had put him where he was, at the council table in the Silver Hall of Alta Torretta, the ancestral home of the royal family at the heart of Central City. She looked again to the empty seat that belonged to her DG, and sighed.

"I put additional patrols on the west branch of the brick route," said the young Cain. "Longcoat insurgents aren't going to simply forget about the stores in the tower."

The Longcoat captain across the table – Lindsey, she was certain his name was – looked sharply at Jeb Cain, his mouth twisting in an attempt to keep his tongue. The bitterness of turned tables, yes, Lavender knew that well, but she could not in her heart sympathize with those who'd lost everything in service to the witch's cause.

"How long can we expect the stores to last?" Lavender asked, touching a cold hand to her brow. The tension of the table was beginning to tire her. She could not fathom how she'd once spent entire days in this chamber, listening to her councillors bicker over policy while the nobles in the gallery quietly tipped the scales of favour with their coin.

"Not long," said the deep, solemn voice of Willem Lesley, a professor of magicks from far off Rossa, beyond kingdom of Evonny. The most educated man at her council after the unfortunate headcasing of Ambrose, her daughters had known him affectionately as Tutor, and he rarely answered to any other name. A quiet, contemplative man, he sat last among them.

"And the treasury?"

This time it was another who spoke, the dark-skinned man who left Azkadellia's side only to sleep, a man her daughter referred to as Vye. "There is little that remains of the queen's treasury as you remember it, my lady," he said in an officious manner, one she recognized as belonging to a well-schooled advisor. "It was the export of the moretanium that funded the expansion and allowed the tower to be built."

"Export to where?" asked Glitch. "The amount of moretanium needed to build the Sunceder alone –"

"The foremen kept the miners very... _dedicated_," Vye said with a wry smile. "Trade was mostly with Evonny. Ixii cut ties after Central City fell. They were very fond of the Mystic Man, and took his betrayal rather badly."

The news of Ixii did not surprise her. Relations had been strained long before she'd ascended after the death of her mother. The betrothal of her DG to the heir of the Ixiian throne had been meant to strengthen the crumbling alliance. Her daughter's 'death' had sent it all spiralling.

"And what of Aurissau?" Lavender asked. She was deeply unsettled. With the chaos that had surrounded her constantly since the events of the eclipse and the final battle on the steps of the witch's tower, she'd given no thought to the lands beyond her own borders. The state of the world had mattered so little.

"There's been no contact with Aurissau since the port of Qhoyre was destroyed," Azkadellia said in a small voice.

"Qhoyre no longer stands?" Lavender could scarcely believe what she'd heard, but the sudden sag of her daughter's shoulders told her terrible truths.

"The city was found to be smuggling well-connected royalists out of the country," Vye finished for Azkadellia, and left it at that.

Lavender sat back in her chair, at a loss for words. All that remained of the alliances forged by her ancestors were ashes long scattered to the wind.

"Your Grace, I believe it may be necessary to seek aid from the other kingdoms," Tutor said, a reassuring voice she remembered well, always careful, always truthful. "Without funds or support, we stand little chance of flushing out the remainder of the Longcoat deserters. Your position is vulnerable. The next few annuals will be very harsh, and if the insurgents continue to attack –"

"Support comes from the generals, once they pull their heads out of the sand," her husband said, with some heat.

"Without monetary aid, we won't be able to supply our own men, let alone keep the torch-and-pitchfork crowd fed and happy," Glitch said, managing to be both crude and astute.

Lavender held up a hand, and her councillors fell quiet. She looked around her, at her daughter with hands locked in her lap, at her scarred advisor with his fluttering smiles, at the ex-lawman who always stayed so quiet, at the two young hot-heads who could not get past their blind hate of the other's cause to work together toward a common goal of lasting peace. Last she looked to the empty seat to her right, set between a concerned Glitch and a brooding Wyatt Cain.

"I believe we are finished for today," she said, and stood. Almost immediately, her husband was at her side, holding out an arm and she gave him a grateful smile. To the rest, she said, "I want those supplies distributed as soon as they arrive. Captain Cain, have a small group of your men ride out to meet them. I'll have no thefts, there are hungry people waiting."

"Yes, Your Grace," said the young Jeb Cain, and he bowed as he left the room.

The old tutor was not to be deterred so easily. "With all due respect, Your Grace, we must –"

Again, she held up a hand. "I will think on what you've said, my friend, I promise you." She looked around the great hall, haunted by ghosts with familiar faces, the echo of nine lost annuals calling out with every footstep taken. It sent a chill deep down into her, one of foreboding that lingered in her bones.

"Are you all right, Your Majesty?" asked Glitch, with soft concern.

She nodded, shaking off her dark fears as only so much stress and worry. "Yes, I am," she said. "Now, would someone please bring me my daughter?"


	2. Chapter Two

******Author's Note**: Thank you so much, my readers, for the positive response to this story. All your reviews and subscriptions and favourites are appreciated, and very encouraging!

**'Til Kingdom Come  
**

**Chapter Two**

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_DG**  
**_

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Everything was dead.

Everything was dead because of her.

That there was an ugly, sobering truth, but it had been sinking in for few weeks now, and DG was finally beginning to feel that she was coming to better terms with her guilt. After all, it wasn't making her weepy anymore, and most days there were only a few things that could set off that sickening feeling twisting in her stomach, or that suffocating heaviness expanding in her chest.

Only a _few_ things.

Still, sometimes when she was alone, it crept over her, all quiet and consuming, and she just gave it time to sink in a little further, roots growing so deep as to become a part of everything she was. What else could she do? Running wasn't an option, neither was hiding, and actually _facing_ her troubles seemed so impossible. The severity of it, that grand, encompassing scale, her little stone sent skipping and all those far-reaching ripples. One little mistake to shake the very foundations of the world.

All right, maybe that was pushing it. Yet it was hard at times to keep her secret shames in check. Especially when it surrounded her as it did now.

She'd tucked herself away in one of the gardens, in need of a little peace. The palace was full of these little hidden enclaves, untended solariums and overgrown balconies, conservatories resting abandoned beneath broken panes of lead glass. There was even a terraced courtyard that had once been a vegetable and herb garden behind the main kitchens. She'd found so many of these places and more during her explorations, and had a feeling she'd never come close to finding them all. She wasn't sure she'd wanted to.

Because everything was dead.

She'd returned to an old haunt, hiding herself with the deliberate knowledge that she was expected to be somewhere else. She just didn't have it in her to listen to more bad news, not just then. She was too damn tired. She slept strangely here in the O.Z., and she didn't know why. It didn't help matters that her new bed was three times the size of the one she'd slept in almost every night of her life.

Every night of her life that she could recall, anyway. This new bed, fourpostered, headboarded, and _huge_, her father had told her that it had always been hers, the bed and the room and the view, even though she'd only stayed in Central City a handful of times as a child, and never for long.

"_Place definitely isn't for kids," _her father had said, with a sad smile and a weary shrug.

As she looked around the forgotten solar, she couldn't help but agree.

Still, of all the lonely, empty, ruined rooms she'd wandered through in the past few weeks, this place was by far her favourite. A little brighter than the rest, there was still colour here beneath the layers of dust. The walls were lined with empty cabinets with doors of delicate stained glass, symbols and figures she couldn't place or name, but she hoped someday to know. The shelves were empty; what they'd once held, she could only guess. Trinkets and shiny things perhaps, taken or stolen when the city fell.

It wasn't exactly a happy place, but it felt safe. She always managed to come back, each time the path a little more familiar, a little less frightening. This section of the palace was almost deserted, and she tried to enjoy it while she could. Someone was going to come looking for her eventually. After all, there was somewhere else she was supposed to be.

It was late in the afternoon when she finally heard the telltale echo of footsteps that signified DG-time had come to its end. She was standing by the windows, chair abandoned, book forgotten as she'd become distracted by the view and the rhythm of the city. The windows looked out over the north side, the spindly towers glinting silver and bronze in the light of the suns. The far muddy shores of the lake were just visible over the wall, and it was the causeway that she was watching, and the people and vehicles on it that held her attention when the footsteps grew louder and the doorway darkened.

"Kiddo, I'm gonna need you to explain something to me."

She turned her head. "Now there's a switch," she said, smiling.

Wyatt Cain stepped into the solar with all the delicacy and discomfort of a man who knew he didn't belong. Fallen ivy leaves were crushed to powder beneath his heavy steps as he came into the room one, two, three paces. It seemed as far from the door as he was willing to allow himself to get, and he stood there as a man holding his ground, waiting for her to make her move.

DG didn't have any moves for him, but she didn't have to ask to know why he was there. "How did you find me?" she asked instead, still all light and smiles and she found it more exhausting than hauling her guilty burdens with her wherever she went.

Strange, that.

Cain offered her a half-smile. "Listened to the guard that said 'she went that way'."

"Oh," she said, slightly disappointed. Perhaps bribes were in order.

"Now, back to you explaining why I'm getting dragged to this council of your mother's and you're up here playing hide-and-seek by yourself."

"Not by myself. You found me, you win." She grinned then, a real one that made her cheeks ache. Maybe she needed to start smiling more.

Cain scowled at her, in no mood for games. "Wasn't looking to win, DG."

"Did you take notes at the meeting?" she asked, with less of a smile, feeling a new twinge of guilt. Not much, just enough to make her feel bad and wish she'd put a little more consideration into her afternoon plans. Perhaps gone to hide somewhere she wouldn't be found so easily. Maybe next time.

Only, one look at Cain's face told her that _next time_ wasn't going to be for a good long while.

"Another ambush," he said. "Jeb lost three men."

She chewed on the inside of her lip a moment, wrestling with thoughts far bigger than they'd a right to be. She knew she was supposed to distance her heart from these soldiers, these _strangers_, but she didn't know how and the struggle inside left her feeling sick and confused. It strained something in her, like the splitting of seams and she fought it as she fought everything, a mad scramble to keep it all from tearing open.

She'd always been good at holding the pieces together.

"Was there anything else?" she asked, turning her back on the window for good to face Cain.

"Your mother wants to see you," was all he said.

"So she sent you to come and find me?" She frowned, unsure why this revelation was so disappointing, but for the fact that it made her feel suddenly uncomfortable and brought on the quick realization that Cain stood between her and the door. Lovely.

"She didn't send me," he said, "but I had a guess as to where you'd be."

Again, more sinking unhappiness. "Well, you found me," she said. A little redundant, but he'd had yet to move, except to tuck his thumbs into his belt to show her he wasn't _planning_ on moving. She looked away from him, stared at the floor and the scattered drifts of ivy leaves, star-shaped and brittle. The trellises on the wall held only naked vines

"I win," he said quietly, smirking. "Now why're you hiding up here, kid?"

She rolled her eyes at this shameless winkling for information, but as he had quite effectively trapped her in a corner with what promised to be no small amount of effort on his part, she didn't see much use in putting up resistance.

"Come here, I want to show you something."

There was a moment of hesitation from him, brief but _there_ and she hated herself for noticing. He came though, boots heavy and dull against the floor, and the leaves beneath them crumbled to dust. And for all she'd come to rely on his steady presence at her back, it was different now, _changed_ and she hated herself for that too, for all the hope that had blinded her to the grim reality she'd fought for, a new future that stretched on into forever.

Miles to go.

_Right_.

"The council chamber's got a view just as pretty as this one," Cain said, utterly impassive.

"I needed some time alone," she said, the truth caught like a burr on her tongue.

"You're gonna have to do better than that," he said, and she knew he was right. He'd told her often enough that she spent far too much time alone already, that hiding in her room wasn't going to make the world go away. She'd gotten angry the last time he'd mentioned it, his blue eyes filled with that wearying concern. She'd demanded what right he had to reprimand her, when he chose to spend so much of his own time locked up all by his lonesome. He'd said that after eight annuals, he was just _used_ to it, in a voice so low she'd scarcely heard and she'd wanted to die from shame.

She looked at him, considering. As much as it damaged her pride to admit, for everything that had happened the very least she owed him was a little bit of truth now and then. After all, he was still _there_ when she'd half expected him to disappear into the smoke after the tower had fallen. Still there, and watching, and helping, and attending boring meetings on her behalf and bringing her the bad news to take alone.

It was almost camaraderie. It was almost comfortable.

_Almost_.

She wanted out of there.

"I was saying goodbye," she said, and she half-expected the suns to cloud over and the city to go dark and the world to come crashing down on top of her head, but the only thing that _happened_ was a hand descending on her shoulder, heavy and strong and where was the damn _lightning_?

"Goodbye to what?" he asked in that oddly gentle way he had, he who was all bristle and grumble and growl.

She pressed her forehead to the glass, to better block his reflection from her field of vision so she couldn't _see_ his face and the way he watched her.

"Hank and Emily left today," she explained, feeling childish and cornered. "Out the north gate."

Cain sighed, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. She wondered if it was possible to die of frustration.

"Council chamber looks out over the west side," he said, and then paused, and she imagined him measuring out his words very carefully, his jaw set firm against useless sympathy. "When was the last time you saw them?" he asked finally, almost casually, because _really, _what could he say? She could have almost felt bad for him, if she hadn't been concentrating so hard on not feeling anything at all.

"I saw them for a few minutes when we came to Central City," she said, disappointed in how miserable she sounded. "They didn't know me. They were very happy to meet me."

"I'm sorry, kiddo." The hand on her shoulder slid down to rest on her upper arm, fingers wrapped round still heavy and still strong and she was beginning to suspect she would never be so lucky as to be struck down by lightning.

"Me too," she sighed, and her words fogged the glass and hazed out the world.

"You ready to head downstairs?" he asked.

"No," she said, but turned away from the window anyway, away from the city and the bridge and all those people down below waiting and eager for the bright new future she'd supposedly given them. The smile she gave Cain was the smile she was certain she'd give to _them_, those hungry, hollow, hopeful people who thought she'd come to save the world.

Only, Cain saw her smile for the lie it was and that was _trouble_.

"Cheer up, kid," he said, dropping his hand and she wasn't supposed to wish he'd put it back, and pull her close and hold her until the universe righted itself and she could breathe and rest and live. "I'll walk you down."

Her stomach twisted unpleasantly. Come to see her do her duty, that was Cain, and she was still cornered and there was no escaping him. Damn it.

"How mad was she?" she asked.

"Hard to tell," he said, and then his hand was warm on the small of her back to give her a little nudge toward the door, and she wondered what she'd done to deserve this very special hell – and then she remembered, and she struggled for that newly-found grim resolution that had gotten her through so much during the eclipse, but it was nowhere to be found, not here, not with him. "I don't know why you're worried," Cain went on, so unaware. "She doesn't look the yelling type."

DG gave a laugh, made small by tension. "You should see her disappointed face," she said.

"I can imagine," he said, and perhaps _she_ was imagining it, but the tightness of his voice gnawed at her all the way downstairs.


	3. Chapter Three

**'Til Kingdom Come  
**

**Chapter Three**

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****_Cain_

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Twenty-seven days.

Wyatt Cain was a free man, and had been for twenty-seven days.

So why the hell did it feel like his iron prison was closing in on him again?

It had been creeping on him for weeks, lurking in the shadows as it were. Can't shrug off a shadow. He wasn't one to let personal troubles interfere with what had to be done. That wasn't to say that the past few weeks had been a shining example of his control of character, but there it was again. The suit, affecting him in ways that were not easy to ignore or elude, let alone overcome.

Moving on meant walking forward, one damn step at a time, and he'd done that, was _doing_ that, and still that shadow dogged him, pestered and plagued him. The dreams were bad enough, pale and stained with bloody memories, night after night, those faces, always those faces, but he'd wake to sunlight and room to stretch, and the dreams would fade to nothing as he filled his time, his every waking minute, with substance and purpose.

Idle hands, or something; he had thought the work would distract him. He had thought being useful would _help_. By the gods, it had to be better than doing _nothing_.

Now, he wasn't so sure.

It was Jeb that had been the deciding factor, that final push that had made up Wyatt's own mind to stay in Central City to do what he could, though that seemed to be little enough as it was – aside from keeping his mouth shut. With the guilds divided and fighting amongst themselves and no standing army to speak of, Jeb's meagre company was all the O.Z. had in the way of white knights, protectors of all that was good and pure, the kittens, the daisies, and the light.

The resistance, damaged men and broken women and hungry children. It was enough to make a man want to close his eyes and never hope to open them again. Sometimes Cain thought he could become that man, turn his head and let it all pass him by, but then the dreams would come on him in the darkness and he'd wake to more sunlight, more substance and purpose, and his cycle would begin again.

That first night after the tower had fallen, though – no, he hadn't been prepared for that.

It hadn't started to itch at him until second sundown, hadn't started to twist inside of him like some serpent coiling around his tender, beating heart. He'd felt strangely empty, that much he remembered clearly, even if the rest was fogged with the fondness of memory. _Hollow_ was a good word for it, he supposed, all hollow. Each damned heartbeat had echoed loudly in his ears.

He'd taken refuge with his son, one tent among dozens sprung up at the base of the tower since the fighting had come to its tentative standstill. Something about the canvas had put him at ease, where the oppressive marble opulence of the tower rooms had left him cold and wanting.

Outside, the air should have been ringing with celebration but was instead heavy with loss, and every heart was filled with questions and no answers. The dead were still being recovered from inside the tower, and the field medics were barely coping. His own son had been called on to identify the dead, and he'd returned to his tent wide-eyed and pale, and what remained of Cain's heart had broken a bit then, for a past he could not mend and a future he could not give, for a son who was no son and all he had left in the world.

Reports from the scouts were trickling in: near to half the enemy force had fled, the lines broken the very moment the suns had come back out. Even the resistance was not without deserters, men who'd gone back to homes in the bordertowns, or what little remained of them, gone home to families and farms, gone home to forget.

It was meant to be victory. The men and women who surrounded the fires blazoning in the night, these resistance fighters had set out to overthrow an wicked witch, a tyrant. None yet knew they'd saved a princess from an evil spell. He remembered wondering if any of them would ever truly believe.

And so he'd sat with his son amongst the trappings of the meagre existence of life on the run. The talk had been all business, talk of tactics and supplies and casualties. So many casualties, and the greatest of all lingered over them as a ghost. It had been remarkably easy to avoid such matters of the heart as existed between them; there among the maps and the men was where both excelled. If either had admitted to taking comfort in the presence of the other, it wasn't said aloud.

They had spoken on the resistance. They had spoken on the men, on scouts and generals alike. They had spoken on the weather, the state of the Old Road. They had not spoken on Adora, nor on the suit that held the man who had killed her, somewhere in the southern wilds, waiting for salvation or justice or death.

"Can we expect reinforcements?" he remembered asking, and too remembered how the fleeting look of worry that crossed his son's face had unsettled him deeply.

"Can't say," Jeb had said heavily. "Most of them will probably just drop arms and go home. Only ones you can expect to head this way are the ones without a home left to go to."

Wyatt had stared down at the map spread open on the table, the most recent that Jeb had to offer. He remembered how much it had saddened him to see how the lines had changed since he'd last laid eyes on them. The guild boundaries had been redefined in all five realms, the towns he remembered – including the one he'd been born in – had been wiped away as if they'd never existed. The northern and southern palaces were missing as well.

It could almost have been an entirely different world, but even then in the wake of the battle, Wyatt Cain had known better. Lines of ink were just that, nothing more than an observer's depiction, heavily biased by the weight of the Sorceress' regime. He had imagined then there would only be a few weeks of respite before fighting picked up between the guilds over territory claims.

It had been a generous estimation, proven wrong within only a few days, and the weeks since had not been any kinder.

Necessity had found the royal family moving to the safety of the city, but it wasn't necessity that had found him moving with them. It was his son, those heavy duties he'd taken on from a man he refused to speak of – and that was what Cain kept telling himself, all these weeks later. It was his son, it was for his son, for the cause, for the future of his homeland.

It had nothing to do with a pair of sky blue eyes. It continued to have nothing to do with that, either, even as she turned those eyes on him and stared him down, daring him, daring him to do _something_ and damn it, he had yet to figure that part out.

"You don't have any idea what she wanted?" DG asked him then, her jaw set to determined.

She wanted to know about her mother, and the council meeting she'd skipped. Playing hooky was exactly the kind of thing he would have chalked up to the kid before the tower, before reality had set in and made her a bit more serious and sad.

"Not a mind reader," he said, a simple passing remark, but it wasn't until he'd glanced over his shoulder that he saw he'd touched on a sore spot. "Listen, kid, I'm just here to deliver you to your mother, not to play at guessin' games." He didn't like the look on her face, that _look _she got, the one that made him think his heart just might split in two for the sweet sorrow of it.

They continued on in silence after that, her tromping along in the lead, all pluck and spine. If it had been any other moment in time, the absence of conversation would have been a welcome change, if only because it put an end to her incessant grilling of her mother's intentions. What vexed him was that of the council meeting itself, she'd asked very little, and now it seemed she'd ask no more at all. He had never expected her to have much of an interest in supplies and skirmishes – he himself sometimes had trouble forcing the concern at the council table. Under any other circumstance, he'd expect her to be brimming with questions. Her sudden quiet was just _disquieting_, because when it came to DG, one never knew what wheels were turning beneath that crown of tumbledown curls, and that could be a downright dangerous thing.

The twist of dreary passages she led him down played tricks on his mind. A lifetime before, there'd been a time or two he'd set foot in the royal palace, accompanying the old man whether the call had been business or leisure. He remembered a more vibrant place, unending opulence, lush colour and rich fabrics, full of glass and greenery and enough mirrors to give just about anyone a fixation. He remembered a young queen, a doting consort. The princesses, he'd never laid eyes on in those days, but for the rare picture appearing in the newspaper, grainy and unflattering, two pale cherubs with wide, sombre eyes.

And now, all these annuals later, here he was again in this faded place, barely reminiscent of old glories, and here beside him walked his princess, grown up pretty but still pale, still sombre. The girl trusted him, looked up to him, called him _friend._

But in those sky eyes, he sawwhat she tried so damn hard to hide, he _saw_ and he knew better. It was why he'd grown accustomed to her sudden silences, and why they bothered him so. As to what to do about it, he was at a loss. Ignoring it seemed the only tried and true method, and so to this he adhered, day in and day out while the kid drifted farther and farther away from him.

_If things were different..._

He looked down at DG walking beside him, and he was both distracted and distraught by her intense interest in her shoelaces.

"Deege," he finally tried, and she glanced up to give him a crooked grin, and he couldn't tell if she was trying to throw him off with a feigned calm or if she'd truly wrestled free of whatever had been eating at her.

"It's okay, Cain," she said, and if her smile was not genuine, she was fooling him just fine. "I'm sure she'll understand if I just explain to her why I missed council."

"If you're sure," he said, all the while knowing she wasn't.

It wasn't long before they came upon her mother's residence, a set of heavy doors at the end of a wide, empty, echoing hall, flanked by a pair of young men of an age with the princess at his side. Both wore woollen scarves knotted round their necks, faded and frayed but still clinging to the red of their cause.

"Thanks, Cain," she said, stopping to smile at him once more, eyes flickering indecisively across his face. "Will I see you tomorrow?" she asked, giving him a prompting little nod.

"'Course you will," he said, because what _could_ he say other than the truth, to reassure her he wouldn't up and leave, no one would up and disappear, that even if she woke up tomorrow with a head full of fog in a bed in an attic on the other side of the rainbow, she would still know she hadn't been left or forgotten, that it all hadn't been some awful, wonderful dream.

And because there were guards in the hall, he kept his hand off her shoulder, off her elbow or her back or wherever it had become his custom to extend that gesture of comfort and friendship, and his fingers curled into his palm to stop the twitch and the itch. If she noticed, she kept it to herself, though that overlong look she gave him was enough to tighten his fists and force him to turn before – well, just _before_, and he left it at that, left her there, and walked away.

It was no good, and it was getting worse.

He'd never intended to go down this road – that was how the argument began in his head, every damn time. It was familiar to him, this back and forth over heavy truth and bitter reality and that consistent pull of _want _and _can't _that was never, ever satisfied.

At times, it shamed him, other times intrigued him, left him daydreaming, left him laying awake at night. Then, his dreams would come over him, as dreams were meant to do, and he'd wake twisted and uncertain and sick with guilt and the prospect of carrying the weight of it around his neck for the rest of his days. Because, really, what was one more weight to one such as him.

Old arguments, easily put aside. These were his thoughts when he heard his name called, and he stopped trying to find his way back to his own quarters and turned toward the voice.

The man chasing after him was Carver Lindsey, a young field captain of the Sorceress' army who'd been there during the resistance siege. A man who had very recently found himself in command of the few remaining units, gaining with it a seat on Lavender's council and far too many problems. He was a handful of annuals older than Jeb, and like most of the young men who'd joined the war late, he seemed to have more balls than sense.

"Something I can do for you?" he asked, biting off the courtesy of addressing the man by rank. Even with the war over, and with the man in front of him never having done him a wrong, he was still grievously bitter.

"The princess is requesting a moment of your time," said Captain Lindsey, with the wry smile that said it was not a request.

"I just came from DG not ten minutes ago," Cain said, making no attempt to mask his impatience. "Whatever it is, it can't be that important that she didn't tell me then."

"Princess Azkadellia is requesting a moment of your time," the young captain corrected.

"She making it a habit to send you with her messages?" Cain asked, raising an eyebrow.

Lindsey scowled at him. "I carry out my orders without question, sir. I suggest you do the same."


	4. Chapter Four

**'Til Kingdom Come  
**

**Chapter Four**

* * *

_Azkadellia**  
**_

* * *

Azkadellia's head was a lonely place. Her thoughts _echoed_.

It was an unfortunate side effect of her sudden wholeness, one among so many others, but it was one affliction she could not escape, turning her days into wretched, ugly waking nightmares, because her thoughts were _dark _things, full of pain and guilt and lingering doubt.

Was she still Azkadellia?

Was she still alive, herself, or some construct of flesh and blood, all dolled up in green?

Was she _free_?

She didn't know, couldn't know, and as the days went on, marching slow, so did she.

It had become something of her custom to spend as much time alone as she was able to manage without drawing undue suspicion. It was an effortless endeavour. Her presence made people feel uncomfortable and conflicted, and so she stayed away. She did not begrudge it of them. She felt the same, truth be told, each and every time she stared into the mirror, trapped in her own skin. Her _own_ skin, hers, left behind when the witch was driven out, and she was stuck in her hollow flesh with her dark, echoing thoughts.

The days were much longer now, and the world more complicated.

She felt something of a shamed mother, wringing her hands at her pack of angry, unruly children, bound by circumstance, unable to speak, unable to _act_. Those who'd laid down arms after the suns had broken out of their unnatural prison, these were not loyal men. These were the cowards, frightened of a witch, of the power she'd wielded.

Once upon a time. Now her magic sapped her energy, left her breathless and turned her limbs to water. It heated her blood and quickened its rush through her veins, sent her vision spinning, her head reeling.

Her sister petted her, praised her, told her the power would come again, and in those damn sad limpid pools that were her sister's eyes, Azkadellia could see herself reflected, a failure, a conspirator. No victim was she.

DG could never know.

Not that DG was her greatest worry. Ever. No, DG was trapped in her own little circle of oblivion, cycling through her guilt and her pain and her questions like she was caught up in a twister that carried her higher and higher and never set her down.

The others... Tutor, her mother, the ex-lawman who followed her sister's lead wherever it took her... she wondered, incessantly wondered, if they knew, if they could sense that Azkadellia's innocence was not as pure as DG proclaimed, that her soul was not as untarnished as everyone hoped, so desperately hoped.

As for her father, as for DG... there were times when Azkadellia could not bear to see the love in their eyes, the smiles on their faces at the very sight of her. They suffocated her with expectation, while her mother stood back and waited, always watching. As she rightly should. As they _all _rightly should.

She was not immune to the whispers behind her back, to the questions that went unasked, nor the wariness in the eyes of those she loved. Just as her sister strove always to _help_, Azkadellia, too, wanted nothing more than to return her home to its former glory, to come to the aid of her people, to _save_ something, if indeed there was anything left worth saving.

There was little could be done, but that little...

The idea had first come from Vysor as he'd quietly offered what council he could, a seed of thought to burrow its tendril-thin roots deep into her mind, to grow and flourish and consume her waking moments until it was all she could think about.

The only course. A chance. A long shot, to be certain, but – what choice did she have?

And so it was that the chain of events that began with a simple, soft-spoken suggestion brought Wyatt Cain into Azkadellia's apartments, standing as close to the door as he could without seeming rude, and then another step back for good measure. His hands were on his belt if only because the man seemed never to put them anywhere else, anchoring himself on the only strength he knew, his own self. He wore neither harness nor holster, his gun conspicuously absent from his new life within palace walls.

DG trusted him, wholly, completely. Blindly.

But could Azkadellia?

"Mr. Cain," she said, rising from her chair.

"Your Highness," was his required reply, and the bow of his head was stiff, a short jerk if nothing more. "You sent for me?" Eager as ever to be moving far and away from her and her requests. Familiar songs known by heart.

"I did," she said. "Would you please take a seat? I have little to offer but –"

"If it's all the same, I'd like to get this done." There was no anger in his voice, no coldness, but a certain detachment, an impatience that she couldn't ignore.

"Of course," she said, a little disappointed. She'd hoped to catch some measure of the man, this man who'd done so much to thwart so many of the witch's plans, this man who'd overcome everything that had been thrown at him – with help from DG and that certain, special luck of hers. He'd been beaten, imprisoned, chased, bitten, shot, tossed from a window, drowned, chased again, imprisoned _again_; he'd lost his wife, his son, his land, annuals of his life, and still he'd played an crucial role in the ending of the war and the restoration of her mother's line.

He was the one.

"Mr. Cain," she began, "it was brought to my attention that you know the location of – well, a certain fugitive." His eyes narrowed, cutting through her, and she could have shivered for all the ice that was held there. She steeled herself as best she could, her hands on the back of an armchair to keep them still and herself steady, but she did not meet his gaze again for fear she would quail and quake and lose her nerve. "If he has gone into hiding –"

"He's not hiding," Wyatt Cain said evenly. "We locked him up, and good riddance."

"A wise course of action, to be sure," she said carefully, "but as you well know, our circumstances have changed."

"What circumstances?" he asked, and his words were a knife's edge, sharp and shining. His feet shifted, almost as if he meant to step closer to better see the lie in her eyes, but after a moment he thought better of it, and stayed where he was.

"You were present at this afternoon's council meeting," she said. "You are aware of the situation with the insurgents, and the attacks on our forces."

"'Course I'm aware," Wyatt Cain snapped, forgetting himself. "That don't mean –"

"_Mister Cain_," Vysor said loudly, stepping forward from his darkened corner. "You will remember with whom you speak."

"Oh, I remember," said the ex-lawman. "Not like to forget."

Azkadellia watched as Vysor's face hardened, and while she'd become accustomed to such whispers, there were few who would dare to speak with such naked honesty in her presence. She might have found it refreshing if it did not leave her so saddened.

"Leave us," she said softly, and though she could read the objection in her advisor's eyes, he'd served too long under the Sorceress to be capable of insubordination. Vysor bowed his head – a graceful gesture, one of respect that softened the blow of Wyatt Cain's succinct statement – and he left the room without another word, closing the door noiselessly behind him.

"If you have concerns, I would hear them," she said, wanting to emulate the poise and poignancy of her mother, but she felt the blundering child trying to correct a mistake, tromping around in shoes far too big.

The Sorceress had never had much of a stomach for diplomacy, and Azkadellia truly felt lost in such matters, attempting to wrest what little control over her life she could. Her sister was determined to fix what wrongs they'd done. Was it her lead Azkadellia was meant to follow, or was she doomed to walk the road alone, no hope of a redemptive end?

"Trust me," said Wyatt Cain, smirking, "you don't want to be hearing what I've got to say."

"On the contrary," she said, "I am quite curious."

Wyatt Cain seemed to want none of it. "How did you find out about Zero?" he asked firmly, spitting out the name like so much foul poison.

"A rumour heard along the road," she said, purposefully evasive.

She did not tell Wyatt Cain that she'd just banished the source of her information from the room. Vysor's meddling, his ever efficient digging into the business of others that had yielded so much to the witch still remained at her disposal, though she was loath to put it to use. Wealth and fighters and spies, he'd delivered it all to the Sorceress, but never the emerald, that which she coveted above all else, and she'd have killed him for his failure but for the fact that the plans for the very tower she'd raised around her had been the result of his string-pulling and double-crossing. Her most trusted advisor. That singular feat had been his proving and had won his place at her side.

And so Vysor endured after the death of the Sorceress, the end of the war, and all the long, marching days that had come since. His loyalty belonged only to her, Azkadellia, not her family name nor the cause nor the country. Hers, and hers alone.

"What exactly is it you're wanting with Zero?" Wyatt Cain asked, his hard voice breaking into her thoughts with all the grace and subtlety of a thrown brick.

"I need his help," she said, and nothing more. Though she had nothing to hide, nothing to prove, she knew that without the man before her, her sister's guardian and friend, she would never find the one person with whom she had even the slightest chance of mending all she'd broken. The only chance she had at mending _herself_.

"There's nothing that man can do for you, Your Highness," Cain said, not unkindly, but it was only the briefest glimpse of tenderheartedness afforded her before he'd steeled his gaze again. "He's better off where he is."

"That is not your decision to make, Mr. Cain," she said, forcing out the words lest she choke on them. She'd heard too much, knew too much, understood all too well what Cain had lost to the war and the Longcoats. What Zero had taken from him, and why...

"You don't know what you're asking," he said, and for the first time there was true emotion in his voice, something deep and sorrowful that played with the strings of her heart. Almost ironic, as there were those who believed she had no heart, that she'd lost it to the witch, or that it had become some black, twisted thing beating away inside of her.

"I know what I am asking of you, Mr. Cain, and I could ask it of no other."

"So I mark it on a map –"

"No," she said quickly, "it must be you."

Wyatt Cain narrowed his eyes at her. "Why?"

Azkadellia paused, gathering what courage she had. "Your discretion in such matters, for one," she said. "You are a trusted ally of my mother and sister. Also –" And it was here that she balked at such a vile admission, "– your effectiveness was noted by the witch. She found you particularly... troublesome. I would use that to our advantage. He must know from the beginning how the game has changed."

Wyatt Cain took a moment to respond, and it seemed to Azkadellia that he was chewing on what she'd said, but it wasn't until he finally spoke that she realized to some relief that he'd stomached it.

"And if I refuse?"

Azkadellia smiled, still an odd, empty gesture to her without such cruel amusement as the witch had always taken. "You and I both know you are in no position to refuse."

Where such certainty came from within her, she was sure she didn't know. Such moments of vexation were not unknown to her, always leaving her disquieted, unsettled. Remnants of another life, that _other _life, moments and memories that could not be shaken off.

Cain glared at her, oblivious to her irresolution and making no attempt to mask his displeasure. He made a small growling noise in the back of his throat, and asked, "When do I leave?"

"Tomorrow, at first sunrise, I think shall suffice."

After he'd left, all but slamming the door behind him, Azkadellia collapsed into the nearest chair, her legs finished with holding her weight. She cared little for the small cloud of dust that escaped from the upholstery, and even less for crushing her gown with her poor posture. Her body, so accustomed to rigid brace and bearing, did not know how to just _relax,_ and she felt something of an abandoned marionette, dropped and left in a heap of wood and string. This was how Vysor found her.

"The Tin Man left here in quite the huff," he said, and there was a smug smirk on his face, familiar enough an expression to give her comfort even if his words left her cold. "He will undertake the journey, then?"

Azkadellia nodded, touching a soft hand to her brow. "Tomorrow. I want Captain Lindsey to accompany him."

"I'm afraid neither will be pleased to hear this news."

"That is of no concern to me," she said. "As long as the task is completed and Zero is brought to Central City, everything else is of little importance. You will help Captain Lindsey make his preparations. Everything must be ready."

"As you wish, Your Highness," Vysor said, and left quietly once more.

Alone, Azkadellia slowly rose from her chair, absently smoothing her hands over her gown. There was so much to be done, yet little she had to do herself.

Waiting, it seemed, was to be her task, and she would do it grudgingly, as she must.

For fifteen annuals, she'd waited so impatiently as the plans of the Sorceress had taken their shape, as the pieces had come together. So much pain and so many deaths, so many nights of struggle and weeping and cursing, she'd fought and lost and watched helpless as the words had come and her hands had acted and she'd begun to understand the futility in resistance, the hopelessness of fighting.

All the plans, all the pieces, and all it had taken was one little storm to bring it all to a shattering end.

The mirror above the desk showed her pale face, her wide, dark eyes. Reaching out, Azkadellia touched a slender hand to the glass, and sighed. What a coward she was, afraid to face her own reflection. She took a deep breath, and raised her eyes.

The sad, shamed woman in the glass shuddered and began to cry.


	5. Chapter Five

**'Til Kingdom Come  
**

**Chapter Five**

* * *

_DG**  
**_

* * *

It was an ambush, and Cain had been in on the whole thing.

Well, that second part was debatable, but at that exact moment in time, DG was feeling none too charitable. She was, however, feeling ready to bolt and she wasn't sure why. She certainly hadn't been made to feel unwelcome, she hadn't been chastised, propositioned, or otherwise berated, but she had a nasty, twisting feeling in the pit of her stomach that by the end of her visit with her mother, she'd find herself agreeing to do something that she didn't really agree with at all.

"More tea, darling?"

"No, thank you, Mother." Two cups were enough.

From her position by the window, her mother smiled. She was a vision of loveliness, and DG had been watching her carefully as she'd moved about the sitting room, directing the pair of pretty maids who worked tirelessly to give the suite a deep clean that was ten years overdue. Today they were pulling down the heavy draperies to send to the cleaner.

Outside the windows, evening was falling fast and the glass was filled with reflection and lamplight, and it wasn't long after the offer of a third cup of tea that her mother dismissed her servants with their armloads of dusty velvet drapery. Once the door had clicked softly closed behind them, her mother turned toward her, brushing her hands off on her trousers as if she'd been the one up on the ladder.

"I'm proud of you," she said, though she didn't look happy about it.

DG wrinkled her nose. She'd missed council. It had to be a trick.

"I know that the couple who cared for you left the city today," Lavender went on. "Your father suggested last night that you might try to sneak out to see them."

Huh. That, she hadn't been expecting. With a kingdom at stake and the outer realms swarming with deserted Longcoats, she would have thought the least of her parents' concerns would be what was running through _her _mind. Well, then. "I thought about it," she admitted carefully.

Her mother's serious expression softened. "And yet you did not go. When you missed the meeting, I was worried that you had."

DG squirmed a little. Sentimentality was not her thing, but her mother seemed to wear it like perfume, and it made her horrifically uncomfortable. "I just needed some time to think."

Her mother smiled, actually _smiled_. "And what did you discover, my angel?"

"I discovered –" and here she paused, and sighed, thinking of the dead gardens and her Kansas parents and Cain. "I discovered that I need more time to think."

Her mother's smile fell; DG could almost _hear _it shatter like so much brittle ice. "I wish with all my heart there were time for us to mend ourselves," Lavender said sadly, and she took her daughter's hands in her own. DG looked at her, wishing with all _her _heart that she had the words to both comfort her mother and put the entire god-awful situation to an end.

"I was not so foolhardy as to think for even a moment we would all come out of this unscathed, but nor could I ever have imagined the terrible circumstance we now find ourselves in. I would have thought it impossible."

DG didn't like the sound of that. What had happened at that meeting? She replayed what Cain had told her in her mind – an ambush on a supply train? As far as she could recall, since the end of the war there had been three ambushes in as many weeks, and none of the other attacks had left her mother in such a bereft state. No, something else was going on, something she was certain she was meant to understand – if she could just figure out what it was.

"There will come a time for our wounds to heal," her mother said wistfully, almost as if she were trying to convince herself it was so. "Time enough, once we've finished. There is still so much left to accomplish."

"Mother –"

"Would that it had all ended at the tower. We're in need of such a happy ending," Lavender said, and her grip on her daughter's hands tightened.

DG tried her best not to wince. She frowned, and gave up pretence all together. "Mother, I don't really understand," she said.

"I know, darling," her mother said, and gave her daughter's hands a gentle squeeze before letting her go. "I find it difficult to comprehend at times, myself. For now, know this: there are still battles to be fought before we can consider ourselves safe."

This time, DG couldn't help but cringe, her throat cinching. "More fighting?"

Lavender reached out to brush her fingers over her daughter's hair; it was a struggle to sit still, to stop herself from jerking away from a gesture that was meant to be motherly, that _would _have been motherly if she were just more daughterly. Her mother's hands were soft, familiar, but it just felt _alien_ still, and she just didn't know what to _do_.

"Some battles are not fought with soldiers, but with words and deeds – and promises, too."

DG tried her best to hamper an aggravated sigh, but she still huffed a bit as she said, "Okay, Mother. I really need you to speak more plainly. I missed council, and I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're talking about."

Her mother's pretty lavender eyes searched her face, and DG wished she had something more to give than sheer exasperation. Like sentimentality, mind games and wordplay were just not her thing, and she'd read enough Martin to know that meant she wouldn't survive a day at court even if her mother did re-establish one, and that someday she might make an excellent pawn in the aspiring schemes of some dastardly mustachioed jackass.

"You know our position here is precarious," Lavender said, and DG nodded, though she was pretty sure _precarious_ was an understatement. "Our family's claim to the throne is a strong one, the strongest, but should the guilds protest it, or heaven forbid ally with each other to oppose us, we do not have the strength of arms to hold Central City."

This, DG knew. The resistance had fought to restore their lost queen to power, to put an end to the horror and hunger of the reign of the Sorceress, but after nine years without knowing if their queen still _lived_, nine years of fighting the Longcoats as they ransacked the countryside searching for the emerald, the cause of the resistance had lost its way.

Whatever benevolent presence had been plucking the strings of fate must have had taken pity on their cause the day a rogue band of the fractured resistance had ambushed a prisoner transport to reunite Cain with his son. Without that singular spark of random chance, DG could not see how there ever could have been a _hope _of stopping the Sorceress and her machine. Without the emerald, DG hadn't had a shred of proof as to who she was, and yet Jeb and his soldiers had trusted her – no, surely it hadn't been _her _Jeb had trusted, but the man who'd stood at her back through it all.

Still, it was a comforting thought, and it gave her the courage to smile at her mother. "Will we be able to convince the generals otherwise? Make them see the light?"

Her sorry excuse of a joke made her mother frown. "I don't know, darling. Perhaps."

DG slumped back against the cushions, giving up on princess posture. Her mother's frown deepened, but that didn't bother her as much. "So what do we do?" she asked, looking down at her hands in her lap, at the discoloured upholstery, anywhere but into her mother's eyes, which could always manage to look both sorrowful and disappointed when she did meet them.

"For one thing, we don't miss any more council meetings," her mother chastised lightly, and DG summoned the decency to look sheepish. Maybe she should have slipped out to say goodbye to Hank and Emily after all; she had a feeling she was going to be regretting it for days.

"Whatever is decided to be the best course of action, I am certain you will fulfil your role with dignity and grace."

DG raised an eyebrow. "My role?"

Her mother took her hand again, but instead of squeezing her fingers comfortingly as she had before, she turned DG's hand over and ran an absent thumb over her unmarked palm. "Astor always said there was great power in you, darling, did you know?"

Something inside DG's chest tightened. "I remember him saying something like that." She closed her eyes. Remembered? It was branded in her mind forever, an ugly memory that was heavy with guilt and rust.

"_Your sister is more powerful than you."_

"I don't wish to frighten you, DG," her mother said, "but there are difficult times ahead, and I must know that I can rely on you to help see our family through."

Family. _Our _family.

DG had had a family once, a mother and a father and an old barn cat who would come when she called him, all blown away by a storm, whisked away, _stolen away_, for a cause and a purpose and a destiny she hadn't known she _had. _

She hadn't realized how much chasing the ghosts of the past would cost her. She'd gained so much more, true parents and a sister and her _friends, _but what about what had been lost? Everything she had known, all the experience that had shaped the person she was had been based on a lie. Who was she if she wasn't what she'd left behind?

Can a house still stand when its foundations have been washed away?

"You can rely on me, Mother," she said, and the words were _empty_ words, but we believe what we want and she _wanted _to believe.

"Soon we will know enough to plan our course out of this storm for good and all," Lavender said, and for a moment DG wanted to believe whatever it was that her mother believed because it sounded so much more reassuring than anything she could come up with. "I have faith that you will be up to whatever task I set you too."

She nodded quickly. "Of course I will." As soon as the words had slipped out of her mouth, DG got a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that agreeing so readily, so blindly to her mother's wishes was no better than signing off on a contract without reading the fine print – or any print at all.

There was a knock on the door soon after, and her mother rose to answer it herself. DG watched her go, struck by the grace of movement her mother possessed, even when wearing a pair of trousers. The leather corset she wore over the outside of her blouse was cinched lightly to give better form to a slender body, one that DG herself had inherited. With her long hair braided down her back, this was as plain and simple as her mother ever dressed, and still she was the most beautiful creature DG had ever laid eyes on.

Her mother stood back to allow her guest entry. Tutor walked in, as big and solemn as he always was, glancing around the room nervously with his hands deep in his pockets.

She waved at him over the back of the sofa. "Hi, Toto."

Tutor looked surprised to see her. "Hello, DG. We missed you at council today."

"Yeah, I'm getting that," DG said unhappily. She was pretty sure she knew what was coming.

"Darling," her mother said, "there is business that I must attend to."

DG sighed, and smiled. See?

As much as it had made her dreadfully uncomfortable, she had thought that perhaps she and her mother had been coming to some sort of understanding, in an _are we there yet? _kind of way – or perhaps Tutor was saving her from signing her life away to her family forever out of guilt.

Who knew?

"I'll see you tomorrow, Mother," she said, and left the room quietly. Whatever business the two of them had with each other, they saved it until after the door was shut behind her.

The corridors were dimly lit, cold, and completely empty. It was a welcome change from the glaring lamplight and warm stuffiness of her mother's rooms, and DG found herself slowing her steps to prolong the walk to her own rooms, where much of the same awaited her. Her thoughts, however, stayed back in her mother's suite.

It bothered her to no end that her mother had used words like _plan, _and _course_, and _task_. And her personal favourite, the harbinger of all her mother's great and terrible words, _storm_. Of all the words in all the worlds, that was the one that made her blood run cold, right up there with _emerald _and _flayer_, the ones that made her feet itch to start running and not stop until – well, _never _seemed just about right to her.

But she couldn't. And she _wouldn't, _because –

"Whoa there, kiddo, watch where you're going."

Because there were hands on her shoulders, and it was time she grew up.

"Sorry, Cain," she said, surprised by how many apologies she was making today.

"It's all right," he said, and let her go as fast as he'd grabbed her. DG paused, and gave him a more thorough look over. He seemed agitated, or rather, _more _agitated than was normal for him. One step above growling and one step below putting a hand on his holster, had he been wearing one. "Just be more careful."

He made to step around her without further discussion, which only confirmed her suspicions. Angry, glaring avoidance. Something was definitely wrong, and somehow Cain's problems seemed far more appealing than her mother's. She didn't waste any time contemplating on just how messed up that sentiment was in and of itself, instead reaching out and snagging the tin man by the arm as he walked past.

"Whoa there, yourself, Tin Man. Where's the fire?"

"Listen, I gotta go –" He shot her an impatient glance that didn't quite meet her eyes. He'd set his lips into a hard scowl.

DG didn't let up her iron grip on his arm, which was tense and hot beneath her hands. He'd rolled his sleeves to the elbow sometime since she'd seen him last. She suddenly wished she'd kept her hands to herself, but it was that touch alone that seemed to have stopped him in his tracks.

"Cain, what's wrong?"

He sighed, and his shoulders slumped. He watched her for a moment before he said, "Looks like I have to go out of town for a couple of days."

"Oh," she said, and she cleared her throat before she continued, unhappy with how disappointed she sounded. "Wait, since when?"

He looked around, and even though they were utterly alone, DG could understand why he did so. The palace had always seemed a place where the walls could eavesdrop as they pleased, and tell the tales to those who knew the right questions to ask. It was unnerving, and _creepy_, and it sent a shiver down her spine just to think about it.

"Don't think here's the best place to be talking about it," he said, and the look he gave her was hard, and she shrank back, finally letting her fingers slip off his arm, but he caught her hand and held it tight and what _was_ it with people and her hands tonight?

"Listen –" he began, but paused, looking down at her and thinking, brow furrowed and nostrils flaring. "Let me get a few things put in order, and I'll come see you before you go to sleep. I'll explain then, all right?"

She frowned. "Can't you at least tell me –"

"DG," he said firmly, and he dropped her hand like he'd only just then realized he was holding it. "Later. All right?"

She nodded, and he walked away without another word with heavy steps, shoulders weighted with burden. She watched him go, knife twisting in her heart, and she had to wonder why it was that she missed one damned council meeting, and the whole world went to hell.


	6. Chapter Six

**'Til Kingdom Come  
**

**Chapter Six**

* * *

_Wyatt_**  
**

* * *

Wyatt Cain's world had gone to hell.

He'd never expected any of this to be _easy._ As a matter of fact, he'd been under the distinct impression that he knew better than any of his companions just how hard this road would be to travel. The road to redemption, the road to reconstruction, the road to their bright new world and all that rested just beyond the horizon, stretching on to a destination that none could see.

He knew hardship, he knew suffering, he knew _sacrifice. _ As did the others, that much was painfully certain. He wasn't as much of an unseeing fool as to ignore that fact.

DG had lost her past _twice._

Glitch had lost _more_, his past, his place in the world, his _brain_.

And Raw –

Well, there hadn't been any word from Raw. Not since he'd left the tower a few days after the eclipse, a young cub of his tribe in tow. Off looking for home. Trouble was, rumours trickling down the Old Road all seemed to confirm one awful truth: the leonine race of empaths had been decimated during the reign of the Sorceress, and those that remained had gone into hiding.

Cain expected the truth to be colder, harder, and uglier than even that. As much as he hated to admit it, he couldn't say when – or _if –_ they'd be seeing their friend again.

It shouldn't concern him.

It _couldn't _concern him.

The world might indeed have gone to hell, but time hadn't stopped its onward march just because the going had gotten a little rough. Things needed _doing,_ and for some gods' forsaken reason that was beyond his comprehension, he was the one meant to be doing them. Chosen. Hand-picked by the princess to be a glorified errand boy.

_Oh, hell. _

Four weeks prior, Cain had woken in the grey dawn on the day of the eclipse, his choice already made. For his wife and for his son, he'd freed a Longcoat from one prison to secure him in another. It was sort of poetical, not that he'd been able to see past the end of his own nose at the time to realize it. No, he'd been caught in a haze, trapped in a ravaged place made up by his own mind and his own bitter experience.

Somehow, he'd known it would not be the end. He'd known that locking Zero in the iron suit deep in the wilds of the southwest would not put to rest their cruel and ugly past, nor would it right the wrongs done to his family.

It would never truly end.

Over the course of the first week of his own freedom, somewhere along the road, his urgency for revenge had turned to a desire for justice, but beyond that – he just did not know. Perhaps he'd thought that sparing Zero's life would be worth the burden he'd carry because of it, knowing that he'd saved himself from the stain of more spilled blood.

It had been a choice. He'd taken action – and now he was drowning in consequence.

If only his son could have seen it the way he did.

Since coming from Azkadellia's chambers – and a brief run-in with DG afterward – Wyatt had spent half the night out of the palace, first tracking down, and then placating, his son.

He'd found Jeb at the garrison, an old Pastorian-era building in a north-end district that the Longcoats had been using as a base of operation in the city. It had been quickly abandoned sometime in the early evening hours the day of the eclipse. Jeb had moved a small company of his men to Central City a few days after the fall of the tower.

The people of the city had taken very little notice to the arrival of resistance soldiers. It had been the arrival of the royals, Azkadellia among them, that had turned their heads.

Since then, Jeb had been splitting his time between the palace and the garrison. He had not ridden out to the resistance camp at the tower since his arrival, sending his scouts and messengers between instead. Cain could not recall the name of the lieutenant left in charge of those operations, but insofar the decision had been a sound one.

Still, Cain was not wrong in assuming that his son was beginning to feel restless, trapped in the city with a desk job and council seat thrust at him after spending so much time in the field, and so many annuals on the run. It made him proud to see his son shoulder such responsibility, but it also made him ache with guilt.

Nine long annuals before, Cain had joined the resistance himself, angered and lost after fleeing Central City with his family. He should have kept on going. The ports had still been busy then, the sandships still heavy with goods for trade; room enough for refugees who had the platinum to pay for it. He should have taken his family across the desert, smuggled them all over the border before Azkadellia's reach had extended too far.

_Should have..._

It was easy to assuage this guilt with busy work, easy to push such dark thoughts away during the daylight hours – and long into the nights, avoiding his dreams still plagued by the faces and voices of the past. There were moments – such as the one he found himself in then – that he wondered if his son had not adopted a similar outlook on his life.

As for the news that Azkadellia wanted Zero freed, and that Wyatt was the one saddled with the unpleasant task, Jeb took it as well as Cain would have expected.

"I'm coming with you."

Jeb was leaning over his battered desk, all his weight on his arms, staring his father down with a tone that brooked no argument. He sounded like his mother.

Cain sighed. "Don't think that's such a good idea, son." Not with Cpt. Lindsey accompanying him. Three days on the road with the darkly brooding ex-coat was daunting enough.

"You need me," Jeb said.

"I need you _here_," Wyatt replied quickly, and grit his teeth together, his jaw tightening, near to painful. He didn't like the look his saw in his son's eyes, panicked and uncertain.

Above all else, Jeb was impulsive – always had been, always would be. It was a trait he'd gotten from neither his mother nor his father, something that was wholly his own. It had landed him into more trouble than – well, it was safe to say that it was one of the few things his son had in common with a certain young woman Cain had recently become acquainted with.

As for DG – he didn't expect that she'd take the news any better. Hell, he wasn't exactly overjoyed himself, yet he couldn't deny that he'd never truly considered declining – politely or otherwise. He strongly sensed within himself a need to see this through, and it was a loathsome twist to see that same need etched clear in his son's face.

"I got a couple of favours to ask," Cain said, levelling his son with a glare. "I think it'd be wise to double the patrol on the route south of the gorge. To tell the truth, I wouldn't mind knowing what's been happening down that way these past few days."

His son seemed indecisive for a moment, but then he let his head hang with a sigh. The tension went out of his arms and he sat heavily in his chair, which groaned loudly as it absorbed the abuse.

"I'll do you one better," said his son, tired suddenly, deflated, defeated. "I'll send my best scout with you."

Wyatt said nothing, torn between trusting his son's judgement or his own instincts steering him toward that polite decline he'd passed over earlier with Azkadellia. Once more, however, he went with what his head told him was the wisest course, and not what his heart vaguely hinted was the right thing to do.

"Yes, sir," Wyatt said, smirking. Jeb's head shot up, and he smiled. It was a refreshing sight.

After, they had talked for another hour or more, going over maps and what reports Jeb could sort out of the mess of his filing system. Kid was in dire need of an assistant, but Cain knew he was putting it off. In all likelihood, it was only a matter of time before one of the guild leaders finally showed his face in Central. The general would bend his knee and pledge his men to Lavender, and Jeb would quietly step out of these too-big shoes he'd been valiantly filling.

Then, maybe –

By the time Cain had left the city garrison, it was late. He hailed a taxi and rode back to the palace in silence. The driver stared overlong after he'd dropped Cain off at the gates to the palace grounds. It was an occurrence that was becoming more and more commonplace here in the city, his face recognized, his deeds known, and it was taking a good deal of getting used to. He wondered if he'd ever manage it.

The palace was dark, and quiet. The halls were all but empty, only the occasional guard posted to some stairwell or another, a door here or there. Little heed was paid to a tired old Tin Man as he walked the dim-lit halls, destined for bed and bad dreams.

Midnight had come and gone by the time he reached the rooms that had been given over for his use while he remained in Central. In no uncertain terms was it assumed his stay would be a long one. Still, it was clean and spacious, and it afforded a view of the Hall of Histories.

Comfortable, he would have called it, if not for the young woman standing at his window, dressed for bed and staring out at his view.

"I figured you'd be getting a bit anxious," he said, shutting the door a little harder than he'd meant to. The sight of her didn't make him happy. She smiled at him, which only made it worse. "What are you doing here?"

"You can't fool me, Cain," DG said, her smile never faltering in the face of his curt manner. "I know how this story goes. You're about to disappear on some secret mission, and if I don't find out what it is before you leave, curiosity might get the better of me before you get back, and then _who knows _what would happen."

"Wouldn't want that," he muttered, distracted by her presence and the shadows and the soft filtered light.

"Therefore, the only logical thing to do is to tell me what you're up to."

"Seems to me like your logic is a bit glitched there, DG." He proceeded to turn on a few lights, chasing the shadows to the corners of the room so that they might not play tricks with his eyes. The brightness only served to bring out the fresh honesty he so often saw in her face, those sky eyes of hers dancing with interest despite the late hour and his halfhearted indifference.

"My logic is perfectly sound," she said, rolling her eyes at him. "Quit stalling."

Cain sighed. "It's nothin' to get excited over. Got to pick up a prisoner from down south. Shouldn't take more than a couple of days."

"Oh," she said, and her mouth twisted dubiously. "Well, that was easy."

He couldn't help but smile. "Sorry to disappoint. Now, listen, I got four hours to sleep, and –"

"Since when do you transport prisoners?"

When he scowled at her, she batted her eyelashes in return, trying to look innocent. She hadn't left the window, and she drummed her fingers idly on the sill, a rare instance of patience, and if he had all the time in the world, he might have called her bluff, but he only had four hours and so he grumbled, and sat himself down in the nearest arm chair.

"Since I'm the one that locked him up," he said, leaning back. It was easy enough to gauge her reaction by the way the news sent her fidgeting.

"Zero," she said, and when he nodded, she exhaled long and low and loud. "Well, that's a relief, I guess."

"Why's that?"

As happened so often, DG took a sudden interest in the floor as she muttered her answer, words she seemed hesitant to give voice. "When you didn't – well, he was gone, so I thought –"

"You thought I'd finally killed him," he suggested softly. Timidity did not become the princess; she was made far tougher, made for more than sighing and simpering. Those bold blue eyes were meant for piercing a man's soul, not for skipping away with indecision and guilt. "I won't lie to you, princess, the thought crossed my mind more than once," he said, and she looked up at him, all surety and bittersweet faith.

"Well then, I guess you do have to go," she said, and sheepishly brought her hands up to hide her face. Almost immediately apologetic, she made straight for the door. "I really didn't know, Cain, I'm sorry. I should let you sleep."

Later on, he'd think back and be surprised at how fast he jumped up to catch her by the arm as she rushed by. Something had flustered her and fast, and he wanted to know what it was. She stiffened, and refused to look him in the eye, but that didn't stop him from noticing the blush in her cheeks.

"What's got you so worked up all of a sudden?" he asked, and belatedly wondered if he wanted to know the answer.

"There's a distinct lack of communication around here," she said, and shook her head, frowning deeply.

"Sorry to say, Deege, but you better get used to it," he said. "You're not in Kansas anymore."

She sighed. "That's for damn sure."

It felt almost spiteful to remind her of this, but he felt he had to say the words, give voice to that uncomfortable truth. Central City was far from safe. In these early days of their hard-won victory, life in the realms was still bound by courtesy and driven by intrigue and ambition. Even now, the guild leaders played their games, waiting to be courted and favoured, holding out and holding each other back.

Cain had glimpsed this world once, had a brief taste of its bitter fruit in the days he'd shadowed the Mystic Man. This was the world DG had been born into, one she didn't remember. The kid might have considered herself mature enough on the other side of the rainbow, but when it came to life in the Zone, she still had a bit of growing up to do.

"You keep your head up in council while I'm away, you hear me?" he said. "You can catch me up when I get back."

"Sure thing," she said, and the watery little smile she gave him tugged a bit at his strings, just when he was attempting to give her a good guilting. It did not improve his mood any, but when she gave him that shy, sweet look – he gave her arm a squeeze, meaning it to be comforting, but in the next moment she turned into him and hid her face in his shirtfront. The abrupt increase in contact startled him, and he stood frozen, very suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that she was in her nightclothes and she _wasn't supposed to be there._

"DG –"

"Just be _careful, _okay?" she said, so quiet and quick, and muffled into his chest that he scarcely made it out at all. She sagged a little, all the fluster and frustration slipping away. She was so _warm_, solid and slender, and he sighed, and gave in, and wrapped an arm around her back if only to hold onto that little bit of contentment for just a minute more.

"Say you'll be careful," she said again, and her hands curled about his collar.

He hesitated, not wanting to give her any promises when he wasn't so certain himself how it would all play out. But when she looked up at him all doe-eyed and trusting and her thumbs brushed against his skin, he found himself saying, "You know I will," and wondering if he would come to regret it in the end.

* * *

**Author's Note**: HAPPY 5TH ANNIVERSARY, TIN MAN!

I signed up for a few holiday exchanges, but I hope to have a couple more chapters of this story up before the New Year. You Tin Man readers know, though, you are my first love. Thanks for four amazing years in this fandom, you guys, you are my happy place. :)


	7. Chapter Seven

**Author's Note**: All right, my pretties, I'm back. What's more, I bring plot-filled chapters and future OC name-drops with me. This completes laying the foundation for the direction of the story. I hope you enjoy, and thank you for waiting so patiently.

**'Til Kingdom Come  
**

**Chapter Seven**

* * *

_Glitch**  
**_

* * *

Glitch could remember a lot. No one ever gave him credit for it, but there it was. The truth. Cold and hard and truth-like. His memory was to be commended. It probably had been, lauded with a ceremony and a fancy diploma tied with a ribbon, he was certain of it. Certain of it.

If only he could remember.

Still, otherwise, steel trap. Really.

For instance, he could remember his way around the palace. Some might scoff, but it was no mean feat. Alta Torretta was the heart of the Outer Zone, the central spire of the Central City, a delicate spindled marvel of plated bronze and emerald glass, a beacon of beauty in these dark times.

At least from afar, or so it seemed. Near to a hundred floors separated the grand entry hall from the rooftop arboretum under its crystal dome, and all but a handful of them had been abandoned to the annuals, filled with nothing but dust and decay and terrible, terrible memories.

But when it came to that handful of floors and the several dozen rooms that made them up, he could find his way around well enough. Call it talent, instinct, or residual memory –

There, another thing. He could remember a lot of big words, and what was more, he could often remember what they _meant_, and the looks he got never ceased to amuse him, whether it was a roll of the eyes from Cain, or that impish grin of DG's that he liked so much, or even that gentle fluttering at the corner of the Queen's mouth that almost counted as a smile.

Not that she was Queen yet, not without the support of the guilds. Lady Lavender, people were calling her, though even that was more a courtesy of respect.

Lavender. Of all that he remembered, she was at the fore. Fleeting wisps of image or sound, a touch or a whisper, so many lines drawn on so many papers, and through all of it, _her. _Books and quills and little brass gadgets, bits of string and polished stone, chestnut curls and the tarnish of silver, her hand on his sleeve, _always _her hand on his sleeve, but whenever he looked down, there was no soft touch, no pale tapered fingers, only the blush in his cheeks and the babble of his tongue.

He could remember a lot, and he couldn't say he cared for it, not at all.

Still, it kept him afloat in this strange place. He didn't get lost, and no one had to go looking for him, and that was something. Getting distracted was different from getting lost, of course, but he worked very hard to avoid that. And by very hard he meant _very _hard, but sometimes it was unavoidable. Like when a maid would smile sweetly and ask for his help, or he'd hear a note of soft music drifting from down the corridor, or DG would catch up to him and tug him in the opposite direction, whisking him off to he knew not where.

DG was good at that.

Sometimes, he managed to return the favour. Together, they'd explored what seemed like miles upon miles of corridor, and dozens upon dozens of lonely cave-dark rooms.

He very much wished he were with her now, elbow deep in curiosity, helping him to pick up memories as he went like pebbles along a riverbank, but when Glitch glanced at the clock, his heart sank. It was past midnight. DG was in her room asleep, and he was stuck where he was, no friend, no hope of escape, and no pocket full of stones.

"Are we certain that we can trust him?"

It was Lady Lavender's voice that cut into his thoughts, descending featherlight into the muddle that was his mind to disperse the fog with sweet, bright clarity.

"He seems loyal to Azkadellia if nothing else. The council he has given so far has been sound," Tutor said. "As for his plan to bring Zero into this mess, well –"

"Vysor wouldn't suggest anything that would harm Azkadellia," Glitch said, glancing nervously to the queen – no, the lady, his lady. "He'll stand by her side so long as she's standing."

Lavender turned her head ever so slightly toward him, and the corner of her mouth fluttered. He cleared his throat – loudly, too loudly – and looked away.

It still boggled the noggin, her decision to include him in these private meetings. Did his presence offer her some sort of comfort, or did she truly believe that he could in some way redeem himself? Unlike DG, whose guilt was written so plain on her face that it broke the heart, he did not feel he had failed his queen. The mirror had shown him true, he'd fought bravely and suffered for it.

Memories like that don't slip through the seams. Memories like that are a forever brand.

Still, forever branded or not, he was there to help and to do what he could. He owed it to Lavender and he owed it to DG. Truth be told, maybe he owed it to himself, too. It was a whole lot of owing, but he was up to the task. He had to be.

"Cain and Lindsey are likely to attract the attention of the southern guild on their return trip," he said, because it was the only thing he could think to say. "What with their valuable cargo and all."

"Let them," said Tutor. "I can't see an easier way to coax Bowen Reid out of hiding."

"Reid won't move until Andrus does," Lavender said with no small amount of distaste in her voice. Glitch couldn't remember the southern general Bowen Reid, couldn't put a face to the name, but a similar feeling arose in him, and he wrinkled his nose in sympathy.

"Andrus just needs convincing," Glitch said, but it was hopeful, so very hopeful, and it made him sound all the less certain. Which was fine, he supposed, because he _was_ uncertain, because he didn't remember Andrus either, but the respect he garnered with just name alone was quite impressive.

And they were all in need of a little impressive.

"I think Andrus will need more than a little convincing, but all that will keep for now," Tutor said, and ran his big hand heavily down his face. The weariness was showing. It had always shown, Tutor and all his frayed edges, that paper-thin determination holding all the rest together, but there seemed to be more grey in his black hair of late, and his eyes had lost their shine. "Your Majesty," he continued, shoulders sagging, "with all due respect –"

"You are wondering if I have given any thought to your proposal," Lavender said, and the smile on her face was gentle as she regarded the old teacher. "And the answer is yes, I have, though it troubles me greatly. I have no wish to declare the kingdom's vulnerability to the rest of the world."

"I don't believe that will be the case," Tutor said. "News of the battle at the tower will travel fast. It's only a matter of time before it makes it across the sandsea to Evonny, and from there – well, there is no knowing."

Lavender's reply was cautious. "We have no reason to believe Evonny will honour the old alliance, let alone strike a new one."

From his seat, Glitch squirmed and raised a single finger in point. "Evonny needs our moretanium. Couldn't hurt to offer a renegotiation of terms."

Lavender levelled him with those haunting pale eyes. A chill went through him, and he was about to start stammering an apology when she _smiled_, teeth and everything, and all the breath and empty words went out of him.

"Does Evmund still sit the throne?" she asked.

Tutor nodded. "He does, Your Grace."

"I cannot think beyond our borders when our own house is in such disarray," she said, and sighed. "I cannot leave Andrus to his silence. Nor Reid to his biding."

"Or Bluesire to his hiding," Glitch piped up, and chuckled. Lavender's brow knit as she looked at him, and he sunk down a little further into his seat, clearing his throat and trying to look for all the world like he wasn't as foolish as he was making himself out to be.

"Uniting the guilds and seeking Evonny's aid may not be mutually exclusive," Tutor said. "There is no denying that you must remain here to bring Andrus and the others to the council table. They have no reason to refuse you the throne – nine annuals of fighting in your name can't be forgotten that easily."

"I had begun to wonder," she said, so solemn that it almost _frightened _Glitch and he didn't know _why. _It happened so often now but it never failed to overwhelm him, that sudden surge of emotion, a rising swell in his throat and his heart thundering so loud he could hear it echoing in his head.

Instinct with no memory to justify it was a _bitch_.

So thankfully oblivious to his rambling thoughts and swelling surges, Lavender sighed and rose from her chair to pace the undressed windows. From his seat on the sofa, Glitch saw nothing but the light of the lamps, the glass awash with a golden glow and the city beyond it lost. Nervously, he tapped his fingers on the tops of his legs, some unfamiliar staccato rhythm. The urge to do something, or _say _something, was creeping up on him, a spark in his nerve-endings that could only be ignored so long.

Tutor raised an eyebrow at him, but he could only tuck in the corners of his mouth and shrug.

The minutes ticked by in silence, and it gnawed at him, over and over, say something say something say something. There were words, he'd always had the _words_ and the words had _meant _something, and he'd helped, he'd always been there to _help._ He knew that and had been told that and had _seen _it in the foggy, dirty glass, but now he was powerless and mindless and wordless and he really was no help at all.

Lavender still paced, and he was quiet and small, and Tutor was old and weary. They were the three meant to bind the world together while the rest trickled in over the lines drawn in the sand near a decade ago, held back by their anger or suspicion or obstinacy.

Maybe the kingdom was doomed. Maybe the House of Gale would never rise again.

Or maybe there was hope yet.

"You mean DG, don't you?" Glitch asked, his own unsure voice the one to finally break the silence, but hope could not be contained with silence. "You want to send DG."

"I do," Tutor said, but there was no pride in him as he said it, no confidence, no joy. "I mean your husband as well, Your Grace, and there are a few council members who could also be considered."

"Our council is small enough as it is, and now it dwindles by the day," Lavender said. "Above all else, I _must_ bring the generals to the table. I fear we are stretching ourselves far too thin."

"Well, it's good to know all our options, right?" Glitch asked, partly because he always endeavoured to be optimistic, and partly because he wasn't sure if knowing the options made the choice any easier. His decisions had never affected others on _any _level, not before finding DG anyway. To have the weight of responsibility Lavender shouldered – she might not be queen, but she was still looking out for the people of the Outer Zone... no matter what she had to sacrifice along the way.

Mournfully sad, really. He swallowed hard against the next rising tide within him, and stayed quiet.

"We shall see what choices are left us before the end," Lavender said, and she turned away from the window. She seemed to have paled, her lips drawn tight, and the circles beneath her eyes showed all the more. In a sudden flash of clarity, he remembered the lady ten annuals past, chestnut curls and glowing smile, clad in silk and leather, and then it was gone again, just one more image to sort through when he closed his eyes at night, before the dreams came and jumbled him anew.

"I am grateful for your council, gentlemen," she said, and the smile she gave was all wisp and shadow. "I will consider heavily all you have said, but I can think no more tonight. We will wait before we bring this before the council. It is no decision to be taken lightly."

"Sleep well, Your Grace," Tutor said.

Glitch only bowed his head deeply, afraid to open his mouth to break the spell he still found himself in, that vision of Lavender as she was.

He left the room with his new-old friend, checking his long-legged gait to match the teacher's slower one. It wasn't until they'd left the queenless queen's residence and were well away from the ears of the red-scarfed guards who patrolled the corridor that Tutor spoke up with an aggrieved sigh.

"Well, that could have gone better."

Glitch gave his friend a wobbly smile. "I thought it was my job to state the obvious."

"DG can be of great help," Tutor said firmly. "Azkadellia is in no condition. It's all still too soon for her. The poor girl can barely face her own reflection."

"We'll make Lavender see that," Glitch said, cheered by his own optimism. "DG would jump at the chance to help."

"I worry this may be a little out of her league," Tutor said, and he gave an indulgent smile. "I thought the worse thing I'd have to deal with when it came to that girl was making sure she didn't accidentally blow herself up. Guess I was wrong."

Glitch walked beside Tutor in silence. He thought about his young friend, her determination and her strength, her wit and her compassion. He thought about the impact she could make. She could change the world, really, if she set her mind to it.

No one could deny that the world could do with a little changing.

That, there, was reason enough. Now, all he had to do was just convince _her_ of that.


	8. Chapter Eight

**'Til Kingdom Come**

**Chapter Eight**

* * *

_DG_

* * *

DG had never put much faith into her bad feelings.

She had them, that much was true. Everyone had them. It was simply an inexplicable, universal truth that she'd never lost any sleep over. Bad feelings were a part of life, the darker side of intuition, and for her had never amounted to much more than general bad luck or poor timing. She felt, she experienced, she moved on.

But that was before freak storms, evil witches, and men trapped in iron suits had taken everything she had thought she'd known and smashed it to itty, bitty pieces. Brick, pillowcase, and all.

So when she woke in her bed the morning of Cain's departure with a twist to her stomach and a strange weight inside her chest, she did what any sane person would do in her position.

She pulled the covers up over her head, and tried to will herself back to sleep.

Pointless, really. Futile. She could hear movement outside her bedroom, the soft _clink _and _swish_ of someone trying to be quiet, draperies being pushed back, breakfast being laid out. That meant the day had already begun, and Cain was already gone.

DG sighed, and opened her eyes. When had facing the day become so hard?

Then she remembered, and reluctantly got out of bed.

Mornings were the easiest, after all.

She was greeted with sunlight when she finally opened the door to the sitting room, the gloom of her bedroom dissipating at her back as the light spilled in. The maid looked up as she entered, and gave a little curtsy, her eyes to the floor.

"Morning," DG yawned in greeting.

"Good morning, my lady," said the young maid, and with another bow of her head, she disappeared into the bedroom.

DG watched her go as she sat down to her breakfast. Living with the staff bustling around in the background was still taking some getting used to, and she didn't know if she'd ever rid herself of that awkward discomfort she felt when a stranger stepped forward to do something she was perfectly capable of doing herself. Still, there was always a bright side, Glitch was fond of pointing out.

And breakfast was always nice.

She ate slowly, still in no rush for the day to really begin. It was a small meal, and simple, but it was hot and delicious and most importantly, it was not rabbit or ptarmigan.

It was her desperate wish that she never again be required to eat another cuddly woodland creature solely because her survival depended on it. Raw had snared and skinned almost every meal they'd eaten on the road, and he'd done so without a word, quietly urging them all to eat and strengthen themselves.

He'd taken care of them in his own quiet way, and then when the fighting was over, he'd left them to take care of his own, the little cub he called Kalm. Gone just days after the eclipse, gone to find their home.

She missed those coaxing dark eyes, and all too soon, she felt so unbearably sad. She _missed_ her gentle friend, just as she missed Hank and Em, and though it was for only a brief moment that the tears threatened to fall, it was enough. Enough to remind her, as something did every single day, that nothing would stay the same and that nothing was truly safe, even there at the heart of the Shining City.

It made her wonder who would be the next to leave for good.

She wallowed in her miserable mood for most of the morning. After she bathed and dressed, she sat down with her sketchbook and pencil, but even with those familiar tools in her hands she could not shake the heaviness she felt inside, and she was left with nothing but pages and pages of sharp, dark lines and empty space. The floor around her feet was littered with crumpled rejections.

By the time the knock on the door came, she was ready for it. Or, as she was soon to discover, she had thought she was ready for it.

The source of the knocking was Glitch, grinning as he always did at the sight of her, and to her great relief it was a catching grin, and soon she felt her foul mood lifting as he brought the true sunshine in. Smartly dressed and already chattering a storm, she watched him as he made himself comfortable, barely catching his greeting before he'd segued into the day's intrigue.

"Did _you _know Cain was leaving?" he asked, clearly affronted.

She tried to look innocent as she quickly closed the door behind him. "I might have heard –"

"Really throws a wrench into the gears, I tell ya," he grumbled. Dramatic, he threw up his hands while simultaneously falling back onto her sofa. Her sketchpad slid to the floor and her pencil rolled out of sight, but Glitch took absolutely no notice. "I dunno what your sister is thinking, throwing this on the council. What does she want with Zero?"

DG opened her mouth to answer, but found she had not a single one for him, so she shut her mouth again and shook her head. She sat down on the sofa next to him, scooping up her sketchpad as she went. Her pencil was a lost cause.

Unperturbed by her lack of input, he continued on. "We'll just have to lock him up again in the tower. Might as well save Cain _and _your mother the trouble and just leave Zero where he is. Bastard."

"So I'm not the only one who didn't know about this?" DG asked.

Although it wasn't as if knowing _that _made her feel any better.

Glitch gave a non-committal shrug of his shoulders. "I don't know, doll, I really don't. Azkadee's little henchman brought the news to Toto last night. He took it to your mother, and she called for me, and –" He rubbed a hand over his face, stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Gods, I am so _tired_. She had us in there until after midnight, and –" Here, he stopped short, and his head snapped up. "Wait, who told you? Was it Azkadellia? Did she tell you wh–"

"No, not Az," she said, and sighed, wishing as she often did that he could make it through one thought before moving onto the next. Conversations with Glitch were such disjointed things. "I saw Cain before I went to bed last night."

"Oh," Glitch said, and – and nothing else.

She cast a sidelong glance only to see him chewing on his lip. She raised an eyebrow in question but he didn't notice, so deeply lost in his own thoughts that she had to nudge him with her elbow to break him out of it.

"You okay?" she asked, as gently as she could.

Glitch nodded, and his grin returned, unfazed. "Never better," he said, and then added once, a little more quietly, "never better."

She tried to smile because Glitch deserved all her smiles, her oldest friend in that strange place. So clever and so clueless, he'd changed so much since the eclipse, since those precious few minutes that Raw had connected him with the only part of his old self that remained.

After the battle, while the resistance tended to their wounded and locked away the surrendered Longcoats, Glitch had taken her by the hand and pulled her through a maze of marbled corridors. The doors to the brainroom had been broken in and were hanging open, a gaping maw of echoing darkness, and unafraid, he dragged her through into a chamber filled with a greenish glow, the light rippling along the wall in waves.

"_Look," _he had said, beaming ear to ear, and she did, awed and terrified. _"Just look at it, DG. Isn't it beautiful? I knew it was safe, see, didn't I tell you? I knew it."_

She hadn't known what to say, not then and not in all the days that had come marching after. It was simply beyond her understanding, his brain and the electric nodes and his zipper and the emptiness beneath. It made no _sense_, though here he was before her, the bastard child of science and magic, and she just didn't know how it could _be, _except that it just _was. _It made perfect sense to someone. That someone just wasn't her.

Now, he was content to wait with the knowledge that his brain remained immortal in its suspended prison at the tower. His traitorous brain that had given up all his secrets when his mouth would not. He trusted only Raw to connect him to it, and so unconnected he remained, another void in their lives waiting for their friend's return to fill.

There was nothing she could do about it, not then, perhaps not ever. Guiltily, she pushed it away, and she opened her mouth to say something, _anything _to lift their spirits and bring their smiles back to where they belonged, but at that moment, a sharp rap on the door sounded.

"Come in," she said, and before she could even get to her feet, the door opened and Tutor strode in, his expression all business.

"Oh, _now_ I remember why I came to see you," Glitch said, suddenly nervous, suddenly quiet, and the chuckle he gave barely sounded like him.

"Sorry to barge in on you like this, DG, but we need to talk," her old teacher said, dour and dire, and it was only then that DG realized, much to her relief and abject suspicion, that the bad feeling she'd woken with had nothing to do with Cain.

"What happened now?" she asked. Longcoats were her first guess, but she had found people didn't like it when she guessed. Steeling herself for bad news, she slumped back down onto the sofa. Posture was for council, where the hateful chairs demanded it. Belatedly, she gestured to the second sofa. Manners, after all.

"Nothing," said Tutor as he sat. "And that is the problem. Nothing is happening. The generals are still stalling, and that holds back their armies and what's left of the nobility in the north. Your mother has no support."

DG had nothing to say to that. It wasn't news. It had been their precarious situation since they'd dared take up residence in the palace in Central City where there was neither general nor guildmaster.

In the early years of the war, the Sorceress had left Central a free city after Lonot had proven turncoat and the Mystic Man had fallen to his own pride. After the last stand of the Tin Men and their devastating defeat, the Longcoat occupation was just a loose formality, a constant reminder to the citizenry of the change in management.

All history now, but one sad fact remained, that there was no history DG knew of her homeland that was not black and bloody. But even then, there was the tiniest glint of silver lining: if the past was nothing but bleakness and pain, didn't that make the future, _any _future, seem all the brighter for it?

She damned well hoped so.

"DG, your mother is finally ready to stop wringing her hands, and to stop waiting for someone else to make the first move," Tutor said, giving her a patient smile. "I'd venture a guess and say that this little mission your sister sent Cain and the captain on has something to do with it."

She nodded, an absent gesture but necessary. Her heart was pounding away in her chest. She knew it was upon her now, the moment she had been waiting for since arriving in Central City. Her role, her purpose. No more wringing her own hands about how to set things right. The time had come for the doing to get done.

"Fifteen annuals ago, our kingdom was part of a small but peaceful alliance," Tutor said, his voice almost immediately taking on that dull drone that drew on memories of her childhood, making her all at once both nostalgic and terribly fidgety.

Clearing his throat, Glitch added, "And prosperous, don't forget the prosperous part."

"Yes," Tutor acknowledged with a smile, "very prosperous, thanks to the richness of moretanium in the southeast. When the civil war began in earnest after your mother's disappearance, relations with all but one nation fell apart."

"All but one? Wow, I wouldn't have taken the Sorceress for the diplomatic type," DG said, frowning.

Tutor sighed. "Not all of your mother's councillors fought or fled, DG. Some turned traitor to serve your sister, before and after the takeover."

"That wasn't my sister. It was the witch," DG immediately found herself saying, old words stuck on repeat, her own little glitch in her mind.

Tutor offered her a tight smile, but the sadness and doubt in his eyes spoke all the truths that his mouth wouldn't. Whether it was fear or respect or denial that stayed his tongue, it didn't really matter. There were those who just didn't know what she knew, didn't feel what she felt when she held her sister in her arms atop that tower after the melting of the witch. To some, Azkadellia's innocence would always be under question, and because of it, she would never ascend the throne in her own right.

It was a complication that put DG directly in the line of fire, and one that she had a tendency to ignore out of sheer necessity to retain her sanity. Now, however, it seemed she could not. Her complications were colliding, and there would be no more avoiding it.

"What exactly is mother asking, Toto?" she asked, surprised at how tiny her voice seemed.

"A royal visit," was his reply. "Send you to see the neighbours as a gesture of friendship, as it were."

"Why isn't Mother here asking me herself?"

Tutor chuckled at that. "Because she's upstairs right now trying to convince your father to go with you. She wants to put this before the council tomorrow, but she needs your answer before then."

"My answer," she said slowly. "It doesn't seem like I'm being given much of a choice."

"You're right, it doesn't seem like it, but you are," Tutor said, "but I'm afraid there's only one right choice. Your mother is in no condition to travel, and even if she were, she must remain here to greet the generals should they finally come forward."

"And if they don't?" she asked.

"Oh, don't worry," Glitch said, and gave her a serious nod for emphasis, his eyes wide, "once the word gets out that your mother has sent you on an official visit to Evonny, Andrus will have to leave that frozen fortress of his."

"I don't understand," DG said, ever ashamed to admit it.

"The Sorceress seized and occupied a good portion of the northwest to control trade with Evonny, while Andrus was forced underground with the resistance to avoid hanging," Tutor told her, always ready to teach her something. "Word from up the road is that the northern guild is clearing the countryside, and retook Quick City without a single casualty."

"Maybe because there wasn't a single Longcoat left for them to kill," Glitch said, morbidly cheery about it.

"If they abandoned Quick City that long ago, it could mean they're gathering in force somewhere else," Tutor reminded him, solemn as ever.

"Oh, Longcoats, Longcoats, why do we always have to worry about the Longcoats?" Glitch wondered aloud with a much put upon sigh. DG couldn't help but laugh. She jabbed him with her elbow, and he had the good graces to look properly sheepish. But Glitch did cause her to wonder herself...

"Is it safe?" she asked, remembering the attack on the supply caravan Cain had told her about yesterday when he was supposed to be chastising her for skipping the council meeting. "Is there a route patrol that far north?"

"What hostility there _has_ been so far is contained in the west," Tutor said after a slight pause – still, it was pause enough for DG. When she raised a curious eyebrow, he added, "You'll be sent with a large household guard, obviously. A party befitting your station."

DG managed a half-smile at that. "I don't have a station yet, remember? That's what this is all about." Then, another thought struck her. "Wait, will they even believe – well, that I'm me? I've been dead for fifteen years."

"That's the beauty of it," Glitch said, and slid an arm around her shoulders to give her a reassuring squeeze. She didn't have it in her to let on that it didn't help in the slightest. "They won't believe the story from anyone _but _you. And you'll have the emerald, so –"

It was funny, really, how the word _emerald _could make her heart start racing the way that it did.

"Be that as it may," Tutor said quickly. "All the details have yet to be worked out. I may even come with you, if your mother wishes it. And don't worry. Everything will be done to make sure you're prepared, DG."

"No one wants to throw you to the wolves," Glitch added helpfully. She wished he'd stop helping. "So what do you say, Deege? Want to get out of Central and see the world?"

DG looked from one expectant face to the other. She didn't quite know what to say. She'd spent the past three weeks moping about the palace, wishing there was more she could do than sit at the council table and look attentive, and yet here she was, faced with _just that_, the chance to get out and do something, the chance to maybe even make things right, and she could barely work up the nerve to open her mouth.

She took a deep breath.

_Oh, what the hell._

"If it will help the O.Z., I'll do it," she found herself saying, and she'd be damned if she didn't almost sound sure of herself.

Almost.

* * *

**Author's Note**: I may or may not have slightly redrawn the border between the North and West provinces. Thanks as always to KLCtheBookWorm and her map project.


	9. Chapter Nine

**Author's Note**_:_ I regret nothing.

**'Til Kingdom Come**

**Chapter Nine**

* * *

_Cain_

* * *

He would never understand why he'd agreed to do it.

They were getting close.

And there wasn't a single fibre of his being that didn't want to turn around and head back to Central City before he did something he was going to regret.

Otherwise, everything was fine.

If Cain was to be honest with himself – and only himself – he would have to admit, he'd never expected the trip to go as smoothly as it had. Exactly _what _he had expected to go wrong, storms or floods or wild Papay, Longcoat attack or stonemen invasion, it didn't really matter. _Smooth_, by and large, was not a term that Cain was wholly familiar with.

Trouble he knew, trouble he could manage, could _deal _with and move on to the next bump or bend or whatever the road had in store for him. It was the damn _waiting_ for trouble, that's what he didn't like, the anxiety of it that gnawed with needle teeth, always at the back of his mind.

The route had been too quiet and too still, and the longer the world _waited_ to come crashing down on his head, the worse it was going to be when it finally did.

That was only common sense, which, as it turned out, also appeared to be one of the very few things he shared with his companions.

The feeling of impending doom, that was, and sure as hell _not_ the common sense.

If only.

Though it was of little comfort, Captain Lindsey seemed to have his own grim outlook of things. The young ex-coat had barely said ten words since leaving through the south gate, and his silence had only deepened the farther from the city they'd gotten. While Cain was hardly one to criticize such a pensive demeanour, the darkness that filled the captain's head was written clear across his face.

Before this damnable task had fallen into their laps, Cain could not have rightly said he'd gotten a proper measure of Carver Lindsey. Without the cloying opulence of Alta Torretta to colour his world-view with gilt and glass and forlorn hope, with only the broken promise of yellow brick winding its way through the forest of ancient oak and sentinel pine, Cain was seeing a different side of the young man who'd spent near to every council session glowering next to Azkadellia and throwing casual insults at his son.

Here was a soldier, cautious and weary, beaten and bowed. Here was a man, much further into manhood in mind than in body, who knew that the slightest shift in the political winds could bring about a swift rise or treacherous fall.

Cain could spare a little understanding for a man trying to find his footing in the changing world. Hell, he could spare more than a little. In a strange way, Lindsey reminded him of his own son – not exactly a sentiment he'd be sharing with Jeb, that was for damn sure, but it allowed for a little leniency.

As for the other –

The scout that Jeb had sent with them, Jeremy Hass, was a man of close to twenty-five annuals. His shaggy brown hair fell into dark eyes almost hidden behind a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. Central born, Jeb had said, and a fighter for no guild. Loyal only to the city and not to the crown, Jeb had called him keen-eyed and the best scout in his small, fractured faction, though how exactly Hass had come to fight for Jeb, his son had never said.

It seemed Cain was doomed to be surrounded by younger men, fighters who could scarcely remember a time before the famine, when the Zone had known bounty and prosperity and peace. Kids who'd gone to fight not for a royal house that could not protect them, or a kingdom that was falling to pieces around them, but for a bit of a meal and a dry bed and a chance to fight the Longcoats.

No hope for liberation, no dreams of a country rebuilt, a queen returned to her throne. Just a desire to fight against evil before it consumed everything and everyone they loved.

Not a one of them had expected victory, just as the Longcoats had not anticipated defeat.

Just as Cain himself had not expected freedom. Death had not come for him in that iron prison. Instead, hope opened the door, and turned her sky eyes on him, and belief had seen them through the rest, whatever else was thrown in their way.

He had thought he owed it to DG to stay, and rebuild. Pledge himself and his service to the house whose name she now bore. But out here in the southern wilds, the brick route but a crooked, overgrown track before him, he had to wonder if it had been the right thing after all.

His doubt had haunted at him all the first day. Anxiety settled heavy upon him.

When night fell, they made their camp deep in the woods, far off the road just north of the gorge, so close to the cliffs that the constant roar of the falls could be heard in the distance. They did not risk a fire; they did not set a watch.

Cain didn't sleep much that night, and the stiff rustle of the bitter wind through the pine boughs kept him miserable company. The grey of dawn and the songs of the sparrows did little to cheer him. An uneasiness had taken up inside of him, crept right into his marrow, unshakable.

He hurried the others that day, eager to get their bad business done. There was no route patrol that far south, and the bridge was unguarded. That did not, however, mean that it was not being watched. By the southern guild or the renegade Longcoats, or hell, even by a few wayward bandits hoping to make an bit of easy coin harassing travellers. They met no one, however, and crossed the gorge unhindered.

A few hours north of Finaqua, they reached an unmarked crossroad and left the brick route to head west, deeper into the lake country. Hass left them to ride ahead. This deep in the south, Cain's only worry was the guild and its leader, Bowen Reid, a man as arrogant and unpredictable as the Longcoats he hunted and hanged – without trial, it was said, before crowds of jeering guildfighters.

The road narrowed, and the trees closed in. The terrain began to seem familiar to Cain, and then all too soon, it _was_ familiar, and he knew what lay beyond the next bend, and the next.

Hass was waiting for them in the clearing that had once been Jeb's camp.

"It's all clear, sir," said the scout. He'd taken his rifle from its sheath on his saddle and slung it across his back. "The suit is still where you said it'd be. Didn't get too close, can't say for sure if –"

Cain held up a hand to silence the scout, and then dismounted. He drew back his duster and unbuckled his own holster, a simple precaution but one that always soothed him just the same. He gave his horse an affectionate pat before he tethered her securely to a nearby paper birch.

They weren't going to be long, one way or another.

Hass and Lindsey followed after him on foot. He knew the way, though there was no path to follow. When he found the old tree, a gnarled and ancient beast of a thing, he had to force his legs to keep moving. If the men at his back noticed the falter in his step, he hoped to hell they'd pass it off as a stumble over an unseen rock or root.

He was no coward, but he'd never intended to come back to that damnable place. He'd been willing to pass justice into the hands of those whose duty it was to administer it, and had thought himself a better man for the acceptance.

But here he was, hand-picked by Azkadellia herself to fetch this prisoner that was of such great importance to her, no matter the past, no matter the hate, no matter the swallowed pride.

He climbed the short embankment, and there it was, the iron suit, down in its little hollow. It was if he'd stepped away only for a moment, as if it were the same cold morning when he'd brought Jeb to see just what he'd done – but no, it was _different _as well, warm and still, the glare of the afternoon sun dancing off the burnished shell of the suit now, no pale morning light and dew still fresh upon the grass.

"Let's get him out of there," Cain muttered, mostly to himself.

"You're not worried he'll try to run?" asked Lindsey, his dark brow furrowed.

Cain shook his head. "He won't run," was all he said. There was no need to elaborate.

He made his way down into the hollow, crashing noisily through the undergrowth, announcing his presence. He hadn't made it halfway there before the banging started up, frenzied from the first, and some truly awful choked and ragged shouts.

He motioned for the others to stand back before he removed the bolts and let the suit swing open.

The overpowering stench of rust and sweat rushed out, and Cain barely caught sight of Zero's eyes, all whites and wild panic, before he slumped to the ground. He didn't bother to try break his own fall, his face pressing deep into the damp leaves and needles that covered the forest floor, his arms and legs folding beneath him like a rag doll. For one hellishly long moment, Zero's great, gasping breaths were all that Cain could hear.

With a grumbling sigh, Cain hunkered down. There was no sympathy in him, only an empty pit where once his vengeance had burned. He gave Zero's filthy shoulder a hard shove.

"You know where you are?" he asked, his voice carrying an edge he rarely found the need to use.

Zero coughed violently, and rolled onto his back. His eyes focused sharply on the face above him. "At the feet of a hero," he said, cords rasping with disuse. "How's that boy of yours?"

Instead of answering, Cain grabbed Zero by the back of his tattered shirt and stood, hauling him to his knees. Zero spat on the ground next to Cain's feet.

"Never mind your boy, how's the _girl _doing, Cain? Now what would the wife say abou–"

The next time Zero spat, it was a mouthful of blood and a bit of broken tooth through a split lip.

"Tie him up," Cain said to Hass, turning away. He stalked off toward the clearing, his fingers still twitching, his knuckles still numb.

Their prisoner put up no resistance in the end. Even with only four weeks in the suit, he was as weak and unsteady as a newborn colt. But Cain had a sense there was more to it than that. The truth of it was, a man like Zero wouldn't run off blind into the woods even if his legs could carry him.

There was no doubt in Cain's mind that Zero had peered through his tiny, dirty window to see the world go dark the day of the double eclipse, and saw, too, the light wash over his hollow of isolation once again. He'd have known every first sunrise and every second sunset since. Maybe he'd even managed to keep track of the days.

Zero would already know the sun schemes of the Sorceress had failed. That didn't mean the war was over, not to a man who'd been locked up with nothing but a porthole and a patch of primal forest to watch over. No, for Zero, everything would still be very much hanging in the balance.

Cain _really _hated to be the one to break it all to him.

The shadows of afternoon were growing long before they were back on the road again, heading north. None of them were looking forward to spending another night in the forest, this time with a prisoner to watch over, but at least they could make it back to the brick route before dark. Cain hoped he could push them to make it as far as the southern edge of the gorge, even if it meant a little travel by moonlight.

The hours and the afternoon passed, and the road slipped away behind them. The scout Hass rode ahead, while Captain Lindsey brought up the rear, trying to keep a decent distance between himself and the prisoner.

Maybe it was the fresh air or the dusky sky, or perhaps the verdant forest that did it, but Zero began to grow bolder, even bound as tight as he was. The reins of the horse that carried him were tied to Cain's own saddle, but it didn't faze Zero in the least. The cool breeze seemed to invigorate him, sharpening his senses – and his tongue.

"So how flies the Shining City?" he asked casually, as if he'd only enquired after the weather.

"Central City is free," Cain said, not bothering to spare a look back. "Lavender sits at the head of the Silver Council."

"But not on the throne," Zero said, quickly catching that Cain had used no title. He laughed, derisive and ugly, and Cain clenched his teeth against the sound. "And what about the Sorceress? Your little slipper finally stop playing nice, get that business taken care of?"

"Azkadellia's army surrendered at the tower after the machine failed," Cain said, and it was all truth with none of the complicated detail – he didn't know himself how much history Zero was aware of, or how close he'd truly been to the Sorceress. Honestly, it wasn't something he _wanted_ to know.

Zero snorted, and stared off into the trees, sullen and white-faced. "She never got her hands on the emerald, then," he said, breaking what had been a few solid minutes of blessed quiet.

"Matter of fact, she did," Cain said, allowing himself a smile that no one would see, "and it never made a lick of difference."

Silence fell over their party then, uneasy and thick, and to Cain, there was nothing sweeter than listening for a while to the trilling birds and humming insects, the sounds of hooves beating against the hard-packed dirt track, and the rush of the wind through the trees.

It was _peaceful._

It didn't last.

He should have known trouble was coming, but he had somehow been under the misguided impression that he'd tied his troubles into a saddle and shut it up with cold truth and that he'd be able to pass it all off soon enough to someone whose soul didn't burn with regret and sorrow.

He should have been ready, on edge and prepared, so that when the pounding of galloping hooves came tearing through the cadence of his peacefulevening stroll, it wouldn't have surprised him in the least.

It was Hass riding toward them, all speed and no stealth, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him. "There's a blockade at the crossroad ahead, sir," he said, completely out of breath for all that it was his horse who had done the running.

"Calm down, kid," he said, pulling his own horse to a stop, and frowning as she gave what he took to be an indignant snort. "Who are we dealing with here?"

By that time, Lindsey had ridden up to them, still giving Zero a wide berth. "A blockade, you say? Are you sure it's no ambush?"

Hass scowled at the ex-coat who outranked him. "They aren't exactly laying in wait. Looks to be southern guild, sir. Twenty or so. General Reid is with them."

Cain raised an eyebrow. "You know Reid to see him?"

"Unfortunately, sir."

With a sick feeling settling quick and quiet inside his gut, Cain looked wearily around, first to his companions, grim and ashen, and then to Zero, a doomed, heartless husk of a man, and it was with little dismay and much relief that he found he had neither the will nor the desire to fight this fight.

"Right," he said slowly to himself, his eyes and his thoughts lingering on Zero. "Well, I guess we'd better go say hello."


	10. Chapter Ten

**'Til Kingdom Come**

**Chapter Ten**

* * *

_Azkadellia_

* * *

Azkadellia loved to see her sister smile. It was one of the few things that made her – dare she say? – _happy._

Such a small thing, but especially in these dawning days after the war, when everything was still new and uncertain, DG's calm and capable demeanour was a welcome change from the darkness of the annuals before. Her sister was one of the few bright spots opposed to all the cloud and shadow colouring her dismal days.

Standing on the high balconies of the tower, staring out, locked up and powerless, from behind her own eyes, she could never have hoped, or _dreamed –_

There were times when Azkadellia was fully aware of how lucky she was, and then there were the times when it took her wholly by surprise, like a rush of cold air had stolen her breath, sudden and cruel, and it was only once she'd fought to regain it that she realized how precious some things truly were.

Silly, really, but...

She was not in denial of her situation. She had no intention of squandering the second chance she'd been given. The world wasn't ending, after all. There was still time.

And so she sat on a dusty old settee in DG's sitting room, watching as a seamstress measured and poked and prodded her baby sister. DG, ever lost in her own thoughts, took the directions obliviously, turning to the left when the poor woman gestured right, slouching all the while.

"You're still a fidgety thing, aren't you?" the elderly seamstress said with a gentle smile. The stool wobbled dangerously beneath DG's feet as she tried to turn to face her detractor. "Be still, dear girl. I've almost finished."

"I still don't see what's wrong with the clothes I already have," said DG, wrinkling her nose while the sweet-faced old woman took a measure of the width of her waist.

"There's nothing wrong with the clothes you already have," Azkadellia said, "but you need more of them, and far finer, I'm afraid. Remember that Evonny has suffered no war. There will be a great number of expectations of you while you visit their court." As the words left her mouth, she cringed. It was if she had heard her mother come out of her own mouth – she very much wanted to be done with losing herself to another.

"I know," DG said in a small voice, and fell silent. She seemed to be chewing on thoughts much too big for her, and her fidgeting came to an abrupt end.

From across the room, Azkadellia felt guilty for taking on such a disdainful overbearance with her sister, who, by all accounts, was far braver and more selfless than she could ever hope to be again. While she would remain and hide behind the walls of the city and play the reformed sinner as her mother courted the generals for their support, DG would be gone from the O.Z. to the beautiful, prosperous kingdom of Evonny, far-removed from the home she'd only just regained and the family she'd moved earth and sky to reunite.

Their silence continued until the seamstress had finished her work. She left with a promise to return in the morning, no doubt toting an armload of fabric samples and fashion magazines a decade old. When she had gone, DG tucked the stool away and gave her sister another timid smile.

"Have you ever been to Evonny?" she asked, and it was a weak attempt at best, but oh, how Azkadellia loved her little sister then.

"No, I've never travelled over the desert," she said. "The most moving we did as children was between homes."

"So, not even when – well, not _then, _I suppose –"

Azkadellia managed to maintain her fragile smile as she responded, though she felt as though she'd been doused in water once more, all words gone and her breath with them. "No, until recently I was bound to the O.Z. by magic." When her sister's brow furrowed in confusion, she reluctantly clarified, dragging all dark to light. "The witch's hold over me – whatever it was, spell or curse or something even darker, it was ancient and it was powerful. Passing over the desert away from the source of her magic would have killed her, maybe even both of us."

DG sat down carefully beside her. "Why?" she asked, and though the concern was clear on her face, she did not apologize for her curiosity. Nor should she, Azkadellia realized, and reached out to take her sister's hands.

"Magic is rare outside of the Zone," she said, "and the witch's magic was as tied to the land as she was. A bit like a cage within a cage, she could never cross the sands."

Those pale eyes of her sister's widened, so hopeful it hurt to see. "But now you can," she said, brightening. "Come with me, Az."

At the very thought, Azkadellia shuddered and felt her face grow hot. "No," she said, far too fast to cover her cowardice.

Crestfallen, DG said, "I thought it would help."

"I wish it could," Az said. "I wish to the gods that it could, but Mother needs me more."

"Maybe if I just explained to her –"

Azkadellia laughed then, surprising herself. "No," she said again, a little easier, a little softer. "I need to prove myself as no threat to queen or crown, and I can only do that here," she said, and oh, but they were sour words to say. "It's General Andrus I need to worry about, it's Bowen Reid, and Bluesire. The King of Evonny made a good deal of coin trading with the Longcoats. I'm not going to convince him of anything."

"And what about the generals?" asked her little sister, doubt written plain on her face.

"I try my hardest to show them I was not myself," Az said, very demurely as she'd practised so often, but one look at her sweet sister and those eyes of sky and sea, she found her voice breaking as she said what she never thought she'd say aloud. "And I do my very best to show them they have no reason to execute me."

Her sister looked to be trying her best to remain impassive at Azkadellia's blunt statement, but the shimmer in her eyes betrayed her horror and her sorrow. She knew she should be doing something to soothe DG, but she found she had no words left, and all she could do was reach out to take her sister's hand again, and find what comfort she could in the soft glow of familiar magic that danced between them.

DG opened her mouth, then shut it again, and sighed. She swiped quickly at her eyes with her free hand, and gave a gentle little laugh. "Az," she began, and her hand squeezed Azkadellia's own, but whatever else she had to say would never be said, for there was a sharp rap at the door before it burst open without invitation.

Entirely unexpected, Jeb Cain strode into DG's sitting room, Vysor right on his heels, disapproval writ clear in everything from the twist of his mouth to the set of his shoulders. Behind them came Ambrose – _Glitch –_ hands stuffed in his pockets and a skip to his step.

"We have a problem," the young Cain announced.

"My ladies, please forgive the intrusion," was Vysor's more proper greeting. "There's been a messenger from the tower –"

"Sent by the southern guild," Jeb Cain interrupted rudely. "He's not one of our men."

"Be that as it may," Vysor began, but Azkadellia had already begun to put the pieces together in her own mind, and let go of her sister, the loss of connection felt far deeper than it should have. She stood on legs that seemed far stronger than they had any right to be for all the dread in her heart. She held up a hand, and her advisor pursed his lips together and bowed his head.

"What has happened?" Azkadellia asked – not to Vysor, but to the young Cain.

DG, too, had risen to her feet. "And why are you here, Glitch?"

"I just wanted to see where they were going," he said, bashful. He closed the door behind him in an act of contrition. His face seemed unnaturally pale when he asked, "What's going on? Is Cain okay?"

Azkadellia was momentarily speechless; it seemed that her plan was known farther and wider than she'd ever intended. She glanced back at her sister, who gave her an encouraging smile. It was all she needed.

She turned back to the men who'd rushed in so dramatically. "Tell me what has happened," she asked, attempting to keep her voice level and calm, wanting so desperately then to emulate her mother's serenity. She feared it was a lost cause.

"Bowen Reid, my lady," said Vysor. "He intercepted the group just north of Finaqua. He has them imprisoned in the tower."

"When?"

"Two nights ago," said Jeb Cain, "just after they'd pulled Zero out of the suit, by the sound of it." His was a dark tone, cutting and not without arrogance. It was a glimpse, a flicker of the hotter fire that burned beneath all he did not say, the passion of resistance fanned ever still by a fight that seemed to have no true end.

"The message came from the tower? Why would Reid take them there?"

"Reid is still leader of the southern guild, and half of the force stationed at the tower is resistance," Vysor reminded her. "He commands more authority and respect than is necessarily due to – a man of his reputation. He has requested your presence, my lady. He will not release the prisoners until –"

"_'Requested'_?" Jeb snorted. "It was a _demand_."

"It makes no matter," Azkadellia said dismissively, "I see no other option but to go." She turned to Vysor. "Make the arrangements for a car to take me to the tower."

"Yes, my lady," said Vysor, and he left so quietly that she did not hear the door open or close. Or perhaps her mind was just too preoccupied with the unravelling of her hope to notice.

However, she was not too distracted to be lenient when another voice spoke up before her own.

"I'm going with you," said Jeb Cain.

"Captain Cain," she said evenly, taken aback by his brash insistence, "you will remember –"

"Az," said DG softly, and reached out to touch her fingers, and the warmth of her skin only served to show how cold her own had grown in the passing moments. "Let him go. Those are his men, too, and –" Her sister swallowed hard, but Azkadellia did not miss the skipped beat.

"You will inform Vysor, then," she said, barely wasting another glance at the young soldier. He left to catch up to her advisor, all but slamming the door behind him in his hurry.

"Thank you," DG said after he'd gone.

"Don't thank me yet," Azkadellia said, and shook her head. "It seems I've made a terrible mess of things. You and Ambrose must go to Mother immediately, and explain to her what has happened."

"Not Ambrose," Glitch muttered, standing half-hidden near the windows, where a dusty old trinket had found its way into his deft hands. He put it down on the sill and offered up a crooked smile. "The name's Glitch now, if it's all the same. Proper names are much too much too much," he said.

"I agree," DG said easily, smiling at her friend. "But I still don't understand what's going on."

"You and me both, doll," said Glitch.

"If Bowen Reid has taken over the tower, he'll be in Central City within the fortnight," Azkadellia said unhappily. "Which means you're going to have to leave sooner than expected, as soon as everything can be arranged."

DG's eyes widened as Glitch shooed her toward the door. "Will someone please explain to me why everyone is so afraid of this Reid guy?"

Glitch gave a tense, high laugh, and the last, frightened look he gave Azkadellia as he left the room haunted her for days to come.

* * *

...

* * *

The silhouette of the tower began to grow against the sky as the car sped along the western route.

It was difficult to admit, even to herself, how much the sight of the foreboding structure comforted her in moments such as this. There had been many a time since arriving in the city, after council or especially after an unpleasant run-in with an opinionated noble or sneering citizen, when she would seek out western-facing windows just to catch a glimpse of the spindled tower in the distance.

There was strength in those walls, fortified by magic and power and pure energy, and no matter how fragile she ever felt in her body, all papery skin and breakable bones, the tower was a symbol of a time when she'd been protected, and alive, and had all the world under her control.

The young soldier sitting across from her shifted uncomfortably, and maintained his cold, stony silence.

Well, perhaps not _all _the world.

It was long into the midnight hour when they finally reached their destination. A number of resistance fighters of both uniformed guild and Jeb's red-scarfed faction awaited them on the grand, sweeping steps of the main entrance.

General Reid, however, was nowhere to be seen.

In short order, they were welcomed and whisked inside, where the oppressive opulence was quick to settle down upon them, and Azkadellia felt her heart flutter.

It was, of course, her first return to the place she'd, until only recently, called home, and she could not understand the utter disconnection she felt as she walked the black marble halls, but it wasn't until they'd reached an unfamiliar reception room that she came to realize that something truly dark and evil still lingered in the air, a trace of the witch and all her beautiful wickedness.

Jeb Cain, oblivious to the cruel memories that crept like mist around her ankles, did not stay long, and indeed, made no pretence of waiting for Reid.

"If you'll excuse me, my lady," he said, far more careful with his tone in such a volatile place. It was the first time he'd spoken to her since they'd left the city. "I'd like to check on the prisoners – and my father."

"Of course," she said absently, standing before a great glass-fronted cabinet and watching herself very carefully in the reflection. The shelves held books, so many books, but those did not concern her in the least. She didn't quite know what she was looking for in that dusty, dreary glass, but it kept her transfixed all the same, and she held her breath, and waited –

Nothing happened.

She frowned, and touched her cheek, oh so lightly. What was she _waiting _for?

Echoing footsteps from the hall broke into her concentration, and she turned around, only to realize that Jeb Cain had left her. She vaguely recalled giving him the permission, but it struck her then as it hadn't before, that she was alone, only one and one _alone_.

Bowen Reid cast an intimidating shadow. He was tall and dark, with eyes as sharp as a hawk's. Many, many annuals had passed since she'd last seen him, before Lonot had turned traitor and the war broke out in earnest, before Central City fell and the resistance was barely a whisper in the wind. Time had changed him little, though there was a touch of silver at his temples now. His jaw was hidden beneath a shadow of black stubble – two days worth, were she any judge.

"Good evening, my lady," he said, his courtesies perfect as he bowed his head, but never did his eyes leave her, and the smirk he took no pains to hide unnerved her deeply.

"General Reid," she replied stiffly, raising her chin. Once, she'd known how to manage brutes like Reid, how to manipulate them, and unman them. Once, she'd held men in thrall with eyes and voice alone. Did he see her as a threat? Enemy, or ally? Or just as a mere curiosity?

"I'm honoured you chose to come so quickly," he said, taking off his gloves as he walked toward the sideboard where an elegant silver decanter stood on a ornate handled tray. "There's little enough to offer here, but I suppose you already know that." He gave her another smirk. "Drink?"

"No, thank you," she said. "I came to ask what reason you have to detain these men. Their orders carry the seal of the House of Gale."

"Didn't get around to looking at those just yet," he said, pouring himself a generous glass, which he then raised toward her before drinking. "As it stands, the guilds answer to the crown and council, not the noble houses, so your seal is of no consequence to me. The name Gale doesn't pull the weight it used to, _my lady_."

"These men are neither spies nor loyalists, General," she said, still miraculously maintaining her composure. Cool, and collected, and never, ever did she raise her voice. "Two of them are members of the very council you claim to answer to."

"And the other two are a deserter and a wanted war criminal," Reid said, and laughed. He took another drink. "Are they destined for the Silver Council, too? What a rabble you're gathering around yourself."

"I notice _your _seat has remained empty since my mother reinstated the council," she said.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Oh, there must be more empty seats than just mine."

She had nothing to say to that.

"My scouts report that Andrus is still huddled in that frozen estate of his," said Reid, stalking around the edge of the room, an iron grip on his glass. "Bluesire's up a tree somewhere, and no one's seen Harris for an annual. Word was that the Sorceress finally caught up with him."

That Reid was moving slowly closer toward her did not escape her notice, and by the gods, if she could only summon the steel of the Sorceress, but she was not the witch and she was not her mother, either. Instead, she could do little more than take a deep, steadying breath and watch him warily as he approached.

"Did you?" he asked.

"I was a prisoner, and a slave of the Sorceress myself, General," she said. "I can tell you that she never caught Harris. Whatever happened to him was not done by her, or any of her Longcoats."

He smiled then, almost cruelly. "Prisoner and slave. If you say that enough times, do you start to believe it?"

"I do not have to believe it," she said, and she felt herself growing hard and cold, "I know it as truth. There is proof for those who require it – in Central City."

He stopped, close enough to reach out and take her by the arm – or the throat. "Is that an invitation, my lady?" he asked, softer than anything he'd said to her since arriving.

She looked up at him, almost towering over her, a dark, looming shadow of a life that was long gone, and defiance surged through her. She tipped her chin up to look him square in the eye, and she _smiled_. "It is – once you release my men," she said.

Bowen Reid smirked once more, and the glint of his eyes was so very troublesome. "I will release the three men who carried your orders," he agreed, and his smirk turned sinister. "But the prisoner Zero will remain in my custody. He will be transported to the gallows prison in Central City Square. I'm going to hang him for all the city to see. It will show them that the guilds do not forget the crimes of war, even if the Gales already have."

* * *

**Author's Note**: Many of you have been making predictions as to where I'm taking this story. I **love** predictions. Some of them will even be answered in the next chapter. Thanks for reading!


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